Thomas Blumenthal

Anna and John J. Sie Professor in Genomics, Executive Director, Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome, University of Colorado School of Medicine. Molecular biologist whose early work provided the first example of a protein used in a process for which it was not originally designed. Later in career, working with C. elegans, analyzed worm developmentally-regulated promoters, used interspecies sequence comparisons to identify regulatory sequences, and ultimately discovered the first examples of eukaryotic operons. In RNA splicing field, elucidated molecular aspects of RNA trans-splicing responsible for worm operon organization.  Identified all 1200 worm operons. Now studies basic molecular biology of Down syndrome, focusing on what genetic and biochemical changes result in what symptoms.