George Church
PopTech 2009
When George Church launched the Personal Genome Project a few years ago, his goal was to bring us one step closer to practical, personalized medicine. The PGP has since grown by leaps and bounds. By 2010, approximately 100,000 volunteers are expected to have consented to making their complete genotype—that is, the full DNA sequence of all 46 chromosomes—and phenotype available over the internet. Church hopes that broader public access to genome sequencing technology will further our individual and collective understanding of disease, health, and identity.
While the scope of his research defies easy translation for a lay audience, Church has been at the frontier of computational genetics and biomedicine since the 1970s. His crystallographic software led to the first high-resolution folded-RNA structure in 1976. Between 1977 and 1984, working with Walter Gilbert (1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method, and wrote the first automated DNA sequencing software.
In March 2009, Church and his team synthesised the first artificial ribosome; the goal is to synthesize bacterial genomes with new genetic codes, to create new protein types, immune to all existing viruses. He has been granted ten US patents and has more pending.
Dr. Church is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Director of the NIH-CEGS and DOE-GTL Genomics Centers, and has served on 22 scientific advisory boards in the commercial sector.