Jerry McKee Adams, FAA, FRS (born 17 June 1940) is an Australian-American molecular biologist whose research into the genetics of haemopoietic differentiation and malignancy, led him and his wife, Professor Suzanne Cory, to be the first two scientists to pioneer gene cloning techniques in Australia, and to successfully clone mammalian genes. Adams currently shares (with Andreas Strasser) the position of Joint-Head of the Molecular Genetics of Cancer Division at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne (Australia). Their research, following that by Susumu Tonegawa, also led to the discovery that antibody genes encode as bits and pieces, that can recombine in a myriad of ways to help fight infection; they also confirmed earlier work by Shen-Ong & Cole, Leder, Hood, Croce, and Hayward that genetic mutation leads to Burkitt's lymphoma, a malignancy of antibody-producing cells, called "B lymphocytes". It was in Adams' lab that his PhD student, David Vaux, made the connection between apoptosis (programmed cell death) and cancer, while studying the bcl-2 gene in follicular lymphoma, the most common human lymphoma.