Tom Blumenthal is the Anna and John J. Sie Professor in Genomics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where he is executive director of the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome. From 2006-2012, he was chair of the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department at CU-Boulder, where he still holds a faculty appointment. From 1997-2006, he was chair of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the School of Medicine, and, from 1973-1996, he was in the biology department at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Blumenthal’s lab has studied a variety of important problems in molecular biology, including regulation of gene expression, mechanisms of RNA splicing, and arrangement of genes on chromosomes. His lab is responsible for discovering that eukaryotes can have operons, for identifying the protein that is responsible for recognizing the 3’ splice site, and for a variety of other esoteric findings. He now studies how the tiny extra chromosome responsible for Down syndrome changes the levels of so many proteins, even though most of those proteins are not encoded on the extra chromosome.
Blumenthal earned a bachelor’s degree from Antioch College, a Ph.D. in genetics from Johns Hopkins University, and did postdoctoral research with James Watson at Harvard University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
