View source for George Church

{{Short description|American geneticist (born 1954)}}
{{Distinguish|Church of Sequence Space}}
{{Use mdy dates}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = George Church
| birth_name = George McDonald Church
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1954|8|28}}
| birth_place = MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, U.S.
| education = Phillips Academy<br>Duke University<br>Harvard University (PhD, 1984)
| known_for = Direct genomic sequencing<br>Multiplex sequencing<br>Nanopore sequencing patent (1995)<br>Personal Genome Project<br>Genome engineering
| awards = Bower Award (2011)<br>Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship Award (2022)
| fields = Genetics, genomics, synthetic biology
| institutions = Harvard Medical School<br>Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>Wyss Institute
| doctoral_advisor = Walter Gilbert
| website = [https://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/ arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc]
}}
'''George McDonald Church''' (born August 28, 1954) is an American geneticist and molecular engineer. He is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, a professor of health sciences and technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a founding core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.<ref name="wyss" /> He developed the first direct genomic sequencing method, published in 1984, and the molecular multiplexing of 1988, in which pooled samples are told apart by short tags.<ref name="wyss" /><ref name="genomic" /><ref name="multiplex" /> In 1995 he was one of five inventors on a patent application for reading a polymer such as DNA as it passes through a channel, the idea behind [[nanopore sequencing]].<ref name="patent" />

Church founded the Personal Genome Project in 2005, and his laboratory has worked on genome engineering in bacteria, human cells and pigs, on storing digital data in DNA, and on recording images in the genomes of living cells.<ref name="pgp" /><ref name="storage" /><ref name="movie" /> He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011 and to the National Academy of Engineering in 2012.<ref name="awards" /> He is also connected to [[Molecular Reality Corporation]]: his laboratory was the formal recipient of a 2009 grant written by the company's future founder, [[Kent Kemmish]], the two men are among the authors of a 2013 paper on stretching DNA, and Church later invested in the company and became the first formal member of its scientific advisory board.<ref name="cv" /><ref name="threading" /><ref name="sab" />

== Early life and education ==
Church was born on August 28, 1954, at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, and went to schools in the Tampa Bay area before attending Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.<ref name="pers" /> In the spring of 1964, at the age of nine, he built an analog computer for a science fair out of rheostats and galvanometers.<ref name="pers" />

At Duke University he found his subject in 1973, in the X-ray crystallography laboratory of Sung-Hou Kim, where he spent "his second (and final) year as a Duke University undergraduate". The work led to five papers with Kim, among them one on the three-dimensional structure of transfer RNA. Church stayed at Duke for graduate school, first in microbiology and then in biochemistry, but he gave the laboratory his time and the courses very little of it, failed two of them, and was dismissed at the beginning of 1976.<ref name="scientist" /> His own account of his schooling is brief: "I also managed to repeat 9th grade and flunk out of Duke in 1976 and hence received an official letter suitable for framing."<ref name="pers" /> The next sentence reads: "Harvard saw some value in my extracurricular activities and accepted me in 1977."<ref name="pers" />

At Harvard he worked with Walter Gilbert, who had shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a method of sequencing DNA, and in 1984 received his doctorate.<ref name="genomic" /><ref name="gmc" />

== Career ==
=== Genome sequencing ===
Church's doctoral work produced the method he and Gilbert called genomic sequencing. Before it, reading a gene's sequence meant first cloning the fragment in bacteria to obtain enough identical copies. Their 1984 paper read sequences directly from total mouse DNA. The whole genome was cut and chemically cleaved, the fragments were separated by size on a gel and fixed to a nylon membrane, and a short radioactive probe picked out the ladder of bands belonging to one sequence. Each band represented 3 femtograms of DNA, and the same membrane could be probed again and again for different sequences.<ref name="genomic" />

In December 1984 Church was one of 19 scientists at a meeting in Alta, Utah, convened by the United States Department of Energy and an international commission on environmental mutagens. The question before it was whether new DNA methods could detect mutations directly, and in particular any rise in mutations among the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their children. The meeting's main conclusion was that the "methods were incapable of measuring mutations with sufficient sensitivity", and the discussion it began is counted among the origins of the [[Human Genome Project]].<ref name="alta" /> His Wyss Institute biography credits him with helping to initiate the project that year.<ref name="wyss" />

His 1988 paper on multiplex sequencing replaced each sample in a sequencing run with a mixture of many. Every DNA molecule was first joined to a short identifying sequence, a "tag"; the tagged molecules were pooled and processed together, and the resulting membranes were then probed once for each tag. After 50 rounds of probing the signal had not faded.<ref name="multiplex" /> Tags of this kind, now usually called barcodes, became a standard part of high-throughput sequencing. His laboratory transferred its automated sequencing methods and software to Genome Therapeutics, a company in Waltham, Massachusetts, which announced in December 1994 that it had sequenced the genome of the stomach bacterium ''Helicobacter pylori''; his laboratory's site lists it as the first genome sequence, made with methods he developed.<ref name="biocentury" /><ref name="gmc" /> The first published complete genome of a free-living organism, that of ''Haemophilus influenzae'', appeared the following year.<ref name="hinfluenzae" />

In 2005 his group described polony sequencing, in which millions of DNA fragments, each copied onto its own bead, were held in a gel and read cycle by cycle on what the paper calls "a commonly available, inexpensive epifluorescence microscope". It resequenced an evolved strain of ''Escherichia coli'' with fewer than one error per million consensus bases, at roughly one ninth of the cost per base of conventional sequencing.<ref name="polony" /> An instrument built on the method, the Polonator, topped ''The Scientist''{{'}}s list of the year's innovations in 2008.<ref name="awards" />

=== Nanopore sequencing ===
{{Main|History of nanopore sequencing}}
On March 17, 1995, Church, David Deamer, [[Daniel Branton]], Richard Baldarelli and John Kasianowicz filed a patent application titled "Characterization of individual polymer molecules based on monomer-interface interactions". It describes characterizing a linear polymer, such as a strand of DNA, "by measuring physical changes across an interface" as the molecule moves through it and its units interact with the boundary. It was granted on August 18, 1998, as US 5,795,782, and assigned to Harvard and the University of California.<ref name="patent" /> The following year Kasianowicz, Branton, [[David Deamer|Deamer]] and a fourth colleague reported single strands of RNA and DNA driven one at a time through the protein pore [[alpha-hemolysin]], each detected by the dip it caused in the ionic current. Church is not an author of that paper, which is usually taken as the experimental start of the field.<ref name="kasianowicz" />

He returned to nanopores two decades later. In 2016 he and Kasianowicz were among the 32 authors of a paper describing sequencing by synthesis read electronically on an array of nanopores. A polymerase sat at the mouth of each pore, and each of the four kinds of nucleotide carried a different polymer tag; as the enzyme built a strand, the tag of each incoming nucleotide entered the pore and produced its own level of current blockade.<ref name="sbs" />

=== Personal genomes ===
In 2005 Church started the Personal Genome Project, which recruits volunteers who agree to make their genome sequences and trait information public.<ref name="pgp" /> Its first ten participants, known as the PGP-10, included Church himself and the technology writer [[Esther Dyson]]; they received the first data released by the project in October 2008.<ref name="pgp10" /> The nonprofit that runs it, PersonalGenomes.org, which Church directs, describes itself as providing "the world's only open-access information on human Genomic, Environmental & Trait data".<ref name="gmc" />

=== Genome engineering ===
In 2009 his laboratory described multiplex automated genome engineering (MAGE), which edits many sites on a bacterial chromosome at once. Applied to the pathway by which ''E. coli'' makes isoprenoids, it changed 24 genetic components simultaneously, generated "over 4.3 billion combinatorial genomic variants per day", and produced strains making more than five times as much of the red pigment lycopene within three days.<ref name="mage" /> Four years later a team including his group replaced every known UAG stop codon in an ''E. coli'' genome with the synonymous UAA, deleted the protein that reads UAG as "stop", and so freed the codon for new uses. The resulting genomically recoded organism incorporated nonstandard amino acids more readily and resisted infection by the bacteriophage T7.<ref name="recoded" />

In January 2013 his laboratory reported the use of the bacterial [[CRISPR]] system with custom guide RNAs to edit human cells. The paper appeared in ''Science'' alongside a parallel report from Feng Zhang's laboratory at the Broad Institute.<ref name="mali" /><ref name="cong" /> In 2014 Church and colleagues described how CRISPR-based gene drives might spread an engineered trait through a wild population, proposed safeguards, and called for "thoughtful, inclusive, and well-informed public discussions" before any use.<ref name="drive" /> In 2015 his group inactivated all 62 copies of the porcine endogenous retrovirus in a pig cell line, the copy count it had first had to measure, and reported a more than thousandfold drop in transmission of the virus to human cells, a step toward transplanting pig organs into people.<ref name="perv" />

=== DNA as a storage medium ===
In 2012 Church, Yuan Gao and Sriram Kosuri "wrote a 5.27-megabit book using DNA microchips, and read the book by using next-generation DNA sequencing".<ref name="storage" /> The book was ''Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves'', which Church wrote with Ed Regis. Harvard Medical School noted that before it reached the shops on October 2, 2012, its author had already made 70 billion copies, "roughly triple the sum of the top 100 books of all time", at a density of "5.5 petabits, or 1 million gigabits, per cubic millimeter".<ref name="hms-book" /><ref name="regenesis" />

In 2017 his group used the CRISPR system's own memory, the Cas1 and Cas2 proteins with which bacteria file away fragments of invading viruses, to write the pixel values of black-and-white images and a short movie into the genomes of a population of living bacteria.<ref name="movie" /> The movie was five frames of a galloping mare from Eadweard Muybridge's ''Animal Locomotion'' (1887), added to the cells one frame a day.<ref name="muybridge" />

=== The brain ===
In 2012 Church was one of six authors of "The Brain Activity Map Project and the Challenge of Functional Connectomics", a proposal to record the activity of every neuron in a circuit.<ref name="bam" /> The proposal was a starting point for the United States BRAIN Initiative, which his laboratory site lists among the projects he co-initiated.<ref name="gmc" />

== Companies ==
His laboratory's web page credits him with co-founding 51 companies, and says that his innovations "have contributed to nearly all 'next generation' DNA sequencing methods and companies".<ref name="gmc" /> Companies built on work from his laboratory include Editas Medicine, which develops gene-editing therapies, eGenesis, which engineers pigs as organ donors, and Colossal Biosciences, which aims to restore traits of extinct animals, starting with the woolly mammoth.<ref name="gmc" /><ref name="awards" />

== Honors ==
Church was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011 and to the National Academy of Engineering in 2012.<ref name="awards" /> The Franklin Institute gave him its Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science in 2011, for work in genomics.<ref name="bower" /> ''Time'' named him one of the 100 most influential people of 2017; his entry was written by the comedian Stephen Colbert.<ref name="time100" /> Duke University awarded him an honorary doctorate at its commencement on May 14, 2017.<ref name="duke" />

In 2022 the American Association for Clinical Chemistry gave him its Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship Award, named for the inventor of the [[Coulter counter]], [[Wallace H. Coulter]].<ref name="aacc" /> He delivered the lecture as a plenary talk at the association's annual meeting in Chicago that July, on combining machine learning with multiplexing.<ref name="aacc-meeting" />

== Molecular Reality Corporation ==
In 2009 the Church laboratory collaborated with [[Halcyon Molecular]], a startup developing DNA sequencing by electron microscopy, on a Grand Opportunity grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute. The proposal was written by Kemmish, then on Halcyon's founding team; the Church laboratory was the formal awardee and Halcyon the principal sub-grantee, and the grant was for $1.29 million.<ref name="cv" /> Both men are among the fourteen authors of "[[Molecular Threading]]: Mechanical Extraction, Stretching and Placement of DNA Molecules from a Liquid-Air Interface" (''PLoS ONE'', 2013), which described Halcyon's method for drawing single DNA molecules out of a droplet and laying them straight on a dry surface.<ref name="threading" />

Kemmish later co-founded Molecular Reality Corporation, a company built around nanopores whose aperture is changed by sliding one membrane over another. Church became a personal investor in the company.<ref name="records" /> He was also the first formal member of its scientific advisory board.<ref name="sab" /> Company materials describe Church as the "co-inventor of nanopore sequencing", a reference to the 1995 patent application.<ref name="records" />

== Selected publications ==
* Church GM, Gilbert W (1984). "Genomic sequencing". ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' 81 (7): 1991 to 1995.<ref name="genomic" />
* Church GM, Kieffer-Higgins S (1988). "Multiplex DNA sequencing". ''Science'' 240 (4849): 185 to 188.<ref name="multiplex" />
* Church GM (2005). "The Personal Genome Project". ''Molecular Systems Biology'' 1: 2005.0030.<ref name="pgp" />
* Church GM, Gao Y, Kosuri S (2012). "Next-generation digital information storage in DNA". ''Science'' 337 (6102): 1628.<ref name="storage" />
* Church G, Regis E (2012). ''Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves''. Basic Books.<ref name="regenesis" />

== See also ==
* [[History of nanopore sequencing]]
* [[Electron microscopy DNA sequencing]]

== Notes ==
{{Notelist}}

== References ==
{{Reflist|30em|refs=
<ref name="wyss">{{cite web |url=https://wyss.harvard.edu/team/core-faculty/george-church/ |title=George Church |publisher=Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>
<ref name="gmc">{{cite web |url=https://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/ |title=George M. Church |publisher=Harvard Medical School |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>
<ref name="pers">{{cite web |url=https://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/pers.html |title=George M. Church: personal |publisher=Harvard Medical School |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>
<ref name="awards">{{cite web |url=https://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/award.html |title=George M. Church: honors |publisher=Harvard Medical School |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>
<ref name="scientist">{{cite magazine |last=Azvolinsky |first=Anna |title=Curious George |magazine=The Scientist |date=October 2016 |url=https://www.the-scientist.com/curious-george-32764}}</ref>
<ref name="genomic">{{cite journal |last1=Church |first1=G. M. |last2=Gilbert |first2=W. |title=Genomic sequencing |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |volume=81 |issue=7 |pages=1991-1995 |year=1984 |doi=10.1073/pnas.81.7.1991}}</ref>
<ref name="alta">{{cite journal |last=Cook-Deegan |first=R. M. |title=The Alta summit, December 1984 |journal=Genomics |volume=5 |issue=3 |pages=661-663 |year=1989 |doi=10.1016/0888-7543(89)90042-6}}</ref>
<ref name="multiplex">{{cite journal |last1=Church |first1=G. M. |last2=Kieffer-Higgins |first2=S. |title=Multiplex DNA sequencing |journal=Science |volume=240 |issue=4849 |pages=185-188 |year=1988 |doi=10.1126/science.3353714}}</ref>
<ref name="biocentury">{{cite news |title=Genome Therapeutics other research news |work=BioCentury |date=December 1994 |url=https://www.biocentury.com/article/135089/genome-therapeutics-other-research-news}}</ref>
<ref name="hinfluenzae">{{cite journal |last1=Fleischmann |first1=R. D. |title=Whole-genome random sequencing and assembly of Haemophilus influenzae Rd |journal=Science |volume=269 |issue=5223 |pages=496-512 |year=1995 |doi=10.1126/science.7542800}}</ref>
<ref name="polony">{{cite journal |last1=Shendure |first1=J. |title=Accurate multiplex polony sequencing of an evolved bacterial genome |journal=Science |volume=309 |issue=5741 |pages=1728-1732 |year=2005 |doi=10.1126/science.1117389}}</ref>
<ref name="patent">{{cite web |url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US5795782A/en |title=US5795782A: Characterization of individual polymer molecules based on monomer-interface interactions |website=Google Patents |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>
<ref name="kasianowicz">{{cite journal |last1=Kasianowicz |first1=J. J. |title=Characterization of individual polynucleotide molecules using a membrane channel |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |volume=93 |issue=24 |pages=13770-13773 |year=1996 |doi=10.1073/pnas.93.24.13770}}</ref>
<ref name="sbs">{{cite journal |last1=Fuller |first1=C. W. |title=Real-time single-molecule electronic DNA sequencing by synthesis using polymer-tagged nucleotides on a nanopore array |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |volume=113 |issue=19 |pages=5233-5238 |year=2016 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1601782113}}</ref>
<ref name="pgp">{{cite journal |last=Church |first=G. M. |title=The Personal Genome Project |journal=Molecular Systems Biology |volume=1 |pages=2005.0030 |year=2005 |doi=10.1038/msb4100040}}</ref>
<ref name="pgp10">{{cite web |title=Meet my genome: 10 people release their DNA on the Web |website=Scientific American |date=2008-10-21 |url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/news-blog/meet-my-genome-10-people-release-th-2008-10-21/}}</ref>
<ref name="mage">{{cite journal |last1=Wang |first1=H. H. |title=Programming cells by multiplex genome engineering and accelerated evolution |journal=Nature |volume=460 |pages=894-898 |year=2009 |doi=10.1038/nature08187}}</ref>
<ref name="recoded">{{cite journal |last1=Lajoie |first1=M. J. |title=Genomically recoded organisms expand biological functions |journal=Science |volume=342 |issue=6156 |pages=357-360 |year=2013 |doi=10.1126/science.1241459}}</ref>
<ref name="mali">{{cite journal |last1=Mali |first1=P. |title=RNA-guided human genome engineering via Cas9 |journal=Science |volume=339 |issue=6121 |pages=823-826 |year=2013 |doi=10.1126/science.1232033}}</ref>
<ref name="cong">{{cite journal |last1=Cong |first1=L. |title=Multiplex genome engineering using CRISPR/Cas systems |journal=Science |volume=339 |issue=6121 |pages=819-823 |year=2013 |doi=10.1126/science.1231143}}</ref>
<ref name="drive">{{cite journal |last1=Esvelt |first1=K. M. |title=Concerning RNA-guided gene drives for the alteration of wild populations |journal=eLife |volume=3 |pages=e03401 |year=2014 |doi=10.7554/eLife.03401}}</ref>
<ref name="perv">{{cite journal |last1=Yang |first1=L. |title=Genome-wide inactivation of porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) |journal=Science |volume=350 |issue=6264 |pages=1101-1104 |year=2015 |doi=10.1126/science.aad1191}}</ref>
<ref name="storage">{{cite journal |last1=Church |first1=G. M. |last2=Gao |first2=Y. |last3=Kosuri |first3=S. |title=Next-generation digital information storage in DNA |journal=Science |volume=337 |issue=6102 |pages=1628 |year=2012 |doi=10.1126/science.1226355}}</ref>
<ref name="hms-book">{{cite web |last=Leo |first=R. Alan |title=Writing the Book in DNA |publisher=Harvard Medical School |date=2012-08-16 |url=https://hms.harvard.edu/news/writing-book-dna}}</ref>
<ref name="regenesis">{{cite book |last1=Church |first1=George |last2=Regis |first2=Ed |title=Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves |publisher=Basic Books |year=2012}}</ref>
<ref name="movie">{{cite journal |last1=Shipman |first1=S. L. |title=CRISPR-Cas encoding of a digital movie into the genomes of a population of living bacteria |journal=Nature |volume=547 |pages=345-349 |year=2017 |doi=10.1038/nature23017}}</ref>
<ref name="muybridge">{{cite news |title=Scientists Encode Living DNA with Muybridge's Galloping Horse Film |work=Hyperallergic |year=2017 |url=https://hyperallergic.com/390614/scientists-encode-dna-with-muybridge-galloping-horse/}}</ref>
<ref name="bam">{{cite journal |last1=Alivisatos |first1=A. P. |title=The Brain Activity Map Project and the Challenge of Functional Connectomics |journal=Neuron |volume=74 |issue=6 |pages=970-974 |year=2012 |doi=10.1016/j.neuron.2012.06.006}}</ref>
<ref name="bower">{{cite web |url=https://fi.edu/laureates/george-church |title=George Church: 2011 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science |publisher=The Franklin Institute |access-date=2026-10-25}}</ref>
<ref name="time100">{{cite news |title=Time's list of 100 most influential people in the world is full of locals |work=Boston.com |date=2017-04-20 |url=https://www.boston.com/culture/celebs/2017/04/20/times-list-of-100-most-influential-people-in-the-world-is-full-of-locals}}</ref>
<ref name="duke">{{cite web |title=Seven to Receive Honorary Degrees at 2017 Duke Commencement |website=Duke Today |date=2017-04-03 |url=https://today.duke.edu/2017/04/seven-receive-honorary-degrees-2017-duke-commencement}}</ref>
<ref name="aacc">{{cite press release |title=AACC Announces 2022 Award Winners; Celebrates Achievements in Laboratory Medicine |publisher=American Association for Clinical Chemistry |date=2022-05-25 |url=https://myadlm.org/media/press-release-archive/2022/05-may/aacc-announces-2022-award-winners}}</ref>
<ref name="aacc-meeting">{{cite press release |title=Theranos Whistleblowers and Experts on Artificial Intelligence and Genomic Sequencing Draw Nearly 17,000 Attendees to the 2022 AACC Annual Scientific Meeting |publisher=American Association for Clinical Chemistry |date=2022-07-28 |url=https://myadlm.org/Media/Press-Release-Archive/2022/07-Jul/Theranos-Whistleblowers-AI-Genomic-Sequencing-Draw-Nearly-17000-Attendees-to-2022-AACC}}</ref>
<ref name="cv">{{cite web |url=https://molecularreality.com/kemmish-cv |title=Stanley Kent Kemmish, Jr. |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=May 2026}}</ref>
<ref name="threading">{{cite journal |title=Molecular Threading: Mechanical Extraction, Stretching and Placement of DNA Molecules from a Liquid-Air Interface |journal=PLoS ONE |volume=8 |issue=7 |pages=e69058 |year=2013 |doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0069058}}</ref>
<ref name="sab">{{cite web |title=(no subject) |author=Kemmishtree |website=EQBio-OS |date=2026-03-29}}</ref>
<ref name="records">{{cite web |title=Company records |publisher=Molecular Reality Corporation |date=October 2026}}</ref>
}}

== External links ==
* [https://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/ Church laboratory], Harvard Medical School

{{Molecular Reality}}
{{Nanopores}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Church, George}}
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:American geneticists]]
[[Category:Harvard Medical School faculty]]
[[Category:Duke University alumni]]
[[Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences]]
[[Category:Nanopore sequencing]]