biochemist geneticist university professor
After completing his Doctor of Philosophy at Caltech and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, Davis joined the faculty of Stanford"s Department of Biochemistry in 1972, becoming Associate Professor in 1980, full Professor in 1980, and joined the Department of Genetics as a professor in 1990.
Davis is a researcher in biotechnology and molecular genetics, particularly active in human and yeast genomics and the development of new technologies in genomics, with over 30 biotechnology patents. He became director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center in 1994. Davis developed the R-loop technique of electron microscopy for mapping coding RNAs which led to the discovery of Ribonucleic acid splicing.
With Janet Mertz, Davis was the first to demonstrate the use of restriction endonucleases for joining deoxyribonucleic acid fragments.
Davis collaborated in the development of the first deoxyribonucleic acid microarray for gene expression profiling with Patrick O. Brown, and the gene expression profile of the first complete eukaryotic genome (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). Davis, with David Botstein, Mark Skolnick, and Ray White developed the method for constructing a genetic linkage map using restriction fragment length polymorphisms that enabled and led to the Human Genome Project.
In October, 2013, Davis was listed in The Atlantic as one of the greatest innovators currently working: "A substantial number of the major genetic advances of the past 20 years can be traced back to Davis in some way.".
National Academy of Sciences]
He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1983.
