Beaudet received his M.D. from Yale, did pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins, and was a research associate at the NIH before joining Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in 1971 where he remained until 2020. Beaudet has made diverse contributions in the field of mammalian genetics including the discovery of uniparental disomy in humans. His lab first reported that the UBE3A gene mapped in the Angelman region in 1994, co-discovered that mutations in the gene cause Angelman in 1997, and in collaboration with Isis Pharmaceuticals (now Ionis) showed that oligonucleotides could be used to activate the paternal copy of the gene in the mouse as a therapeutic strategy in 2015. During his 48 years at Baylor, Beaudet mentored over 80 postdoctoral trainees and was the primary thesis for 10 Ph.D. graduate students. From 2019-2024, Beaudet was the cofounder and CEO of Luna Genetics, which focused on launching cell-based noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) as a new form of genetic prenatal diagnosis. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 1995 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011. In 2023, Luna Genetics closed, and Beaudet returned to BCM as voluntary Professor.