Tom Maniatis (born May 8, 1943), is an American professor of molecular and cellular biology. He is a professor at Columbia University, and serves as the Scientific Director and CEO of the New York Genome Center. Education Maniatis received B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Vanderbilt University. He carried out postdoctoral studies at Harvard University and at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. Research and career Maniatis developed and disseminated gene cloning technologies and their applications in the study of gene regulatory mechanisms. cDNA Cloning While an assistant professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard, and a member of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) faculty, Maniatis collaborated with Drs. Fotis Kafatos and Argiris Efstratiadis to develop a method for synthesizing and cloning full length double stranded DNA copies of messenger RNA (termed “copy” or cDNA). This method provided a key step in the isolation of human genes, and in the production of “recombinant” proteins in mammalian cells in culture, a central process in the biotechnology industry. Genomic DNA libraries Maniatis joined the Department of Biology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena California, where his laboratory developed methods to isolate and study individual human genes. This lab generated the first human genomic DNA library containing all of the genes in the human genome. Using genomic DNA library, the Maniatis lab isolated and characterized the entire “cluster” of human b-globin genes, which were the first human genes to be cloned and their DNA sequences determined. His laboratory contributed fundamental insights into the mechanisms of RNA transcription, RNA splicing and the regulation of gene expression. Maniatis returned to Harvard in 1980 where he taught and continued his research. In 2010 he moved to Columbia University. While there he cofounded the New York Genome Center in 2010. He became the Scientific Director and CEO of the center in 2016. Molecular cloning manual Maniatis was involved in the writing of the “Molecular Cloning Manual”. In 1979, the Maniatis lab had developed and deployed gene cloning methods. Maniatis and Ed Fritsch taught a summer course in gene cloning at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Based on the material presented in the course they collaborated with Joseph Sambrook, then the Scientific Director of the CSHL, to write the textbook. Biotechnology companies Maniatis and Mark Ptashne