One of his more widely used discoveries was that of a simple PCR test for DNA evidence at crime scenes that is now standard practice among police services in the western world.
He is credited with discovery of the universality of the genetic code and its start and stop punctuation mechanisms (NIH, Health Molecular Biology Award).
[3] In 1971, Caskey left NIH to found the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, where he served as Chairman for the next two decades.
While on sabbatical leave from Baylor in 1979–80, Caskey was a Faculty Scholar at the Cambridge University Medical Research Council unit with another Nobel Prize-winner Sydney Brenner.
[3] In recent years, his work has also involved cooperation with biomedical researchers in the Taizhou Cardiovascular R&D Centre and the Guangshou Institute of Biomedicine and Health (GIBH), Chinese Academy of Sciences.
[5] Over a period of more than 30 years, Caskey has served as a member or chair of the scientific advisory boards of more than a dozen bio-medical corporations, largely focused on human genetics and related gene therapies for muscular dystrophy and other neuro-muscular diseases.
[6][5] In the United States, Caskey has served on advisory boards and review panels for the National Institutes of Health and the Food & Drug Administration, and internationally as a special advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) Hereditary Diseases Program, and as a member of the WHO's Expert Advisory Panel on Human Genetics.