Жордж Чёрч: Американдық генетик және синтетикалық биологияның иесі

American geneticist

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| known for = Synthetic Biology, Woolly Mammoth Revival Project
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| spouse = Ting Wu
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George McDonald Church (born August 28, 1954) is an American geneticist, molecular engineer, chemist, serial entrepreneur, and pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic biology. He is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Through his Harvard lab Church has co founded around 50 biotech companies. In 2018, the Church lab at Harvard spun off 16 biotech companies in one year. Research and technology developments at the Church lab have impacted or made direct contributions to nearly all "next generation sequencing (NGS)" methods and companies. In 2017, Time magazine listed him in Time 100, the list of 100 most influential people in the world. In 2022, he was featured among the most influential people in biopharma by Fierce Pharma, and was listed among the top 8 famous geneticists of all time in human history. as of 2023, Church serves as a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Board of Sponsors.

Church was born on August 28, 1954, on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, and grew up in nearby Clearwater, Florida. He attended high school at the preparatory boarding school Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, from 1968 to 1972. He then attended Duke University, where he obtained a B. S. degree in zoology and chemistry in two years. As a result, Church was not compliant with Duke graduate academic policies, and was withdrawn from the degree program in January 1976. He was told that "[We] hope that whatever problems  contributed to your lack of success  at Duke will not keep you from a successful pursuit of a productive career." The work gave rise to publications that include a Proceedings report with Church as lead author on an early model for molecular interactions between the minor groove of double stranded DNA and β ribbons of proteins. Church returned to graduate work at Harvard University in 1977 under Walter Gilbert, and completed a Ph. D in biochemistry and molecular biology working on mobile genetic elements within introns of yeast mitochondrial and mouse immunoglobulin genes (1984).

After completing his doctoral work, Church spent six months of 1984 at Biogen, the industrial laboratory site where Gilbert had relocated a sizable part of his former Harvard group. This was followed soon after by a Life Sciences Research Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco with Gail R. Martin, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and joint discoverer of a technique to extract mouse embryonic stem cells. Church joined the Harvard Medical School faculty as an assistant professor in 1986. and a member of the Harvard MIT health sciences and technology faculty. He was also a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. He co founded Veritas Genetics and its European and Latin American subsidiary, Veritas Intercontinental, with the idea of bringing the benefits of genomic data to millions of people globally. Church was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2012 for contributions to human genome sequencing technologies and DNA synthesis and assembly. In 2018, Church co founded Nebula Genomics, a personal genomics company that offers a whole genome sequencing service. The company says that it is developing its own blockchain, with the purpose to improve privacy and security while also giving the possibility to people to have free sequencing in exchange of their genomic and personal data but, despite that, re identification of people starting from the genetic data could still be possible (DNA itself is a unique identifier), law enforcement could still issue search warrants or subpoena the data and this technology, given also the fact that is hard to implement, could still be vulnerable to data breaches. In 2021, Church joined as a co founder of HLTH. network (formerly Shivom), a healthcare blockchain startup which created the world's first global genomics data sharing and analytics marketplace. The HLTH. network aims to be the "world's first base layer protocol for global health data."

Since 2007, Church has served on scientific advisory board of BGI Group, which has been designated as a Chinese military company by the U. S. Department of Defense. In 2017, BGI established the "George Church Institute of Regenesis", a research collaboration between Church's lab and about a dozen staffers at BGI in China. Dr. Xun Xu, executive director of BGI Group said,
Professor George Church is a legend in this field for his creative achievements in gene editing and genome synthesis. With support of advanced technology platform of China National GeneBank, the collaboration between BGI and Professor Church will bring top resources and talents together to overcome current bottleneck issues and further improve the technology. On February 18, 2020, Nebula Genomics, a personal genomics company founded by Church, announced that had partnered up with BGI; the saliva samples sent to Nebula Genomics for decoding are then sent by the company to BGI labs in Hong Kong for sequencing. Nebula Genomics said that this partnership was made to bring down the cost of whole genome sequencing (they offer 30x whole genome sequencing for $299), since normally it has a cost that makes it inaccessible to most people.

Church is known for his professional contributions in the sequencing of genomes and interpreting such data, in synthetic biology and genome engineering, and in an emerging area of neuroscience that proposes to map brain activity and establish a "functional connectome". Church is known for pioneering the specialized fields of personal genomics and synthetic biology. He has co founded commercial concerns spanning these areas, and others from green and natural products chemistry to infectious agent testing and fuel production, including Knome, LS9, and Joule Unlimited (respectively, human genomics, green chemistry, and solar fuel companies).

With Walter Gilbert, Church published the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984. Described in that publication were the cyclic application of fluids to a solid phase alternating with imaging, plus avoidance of bacterial cloning, strategies that are still used in current dominant Next Generation Sequencing technologies. These technologies began to affect genome scale sequencing in 2005. Church also helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984. He invented the broadly applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and barcode tags, and his genome was the fifth whole human genome ever sequenced. Church was the first person to make his medical records and genome publicly available to researchers. Technology transfer of automated sequencing and software from his Harvard laboratory to Genome Therapeutics Corp. resulted in the first bacterial genome sequence and first commercial genome (the human pathogen Helicobacter pylori) in 1994. Church was co inventor of nanopore sequencing in 1995, which is now commercially available (e. g. Oxford Nanopore Technologies), but not in the form embodied in Church's contribution to the original patents. To aid in the interpretation and sharing of genomes, Church initiated the Personal Genome Project (PGP) in 2005, providing the world's only open access human genome and trait data sets. Church furthermore announced his intention to publish his DNA via NFT and use the profits made through its sale to finance research conducted by Nebula Genomics. In June 2022 20 NFTs with his likeness were published instead of the originally planned NFTs of his DNA due to the market conditions at the time. Despite leading to mixed reactions the project is considered to be part of an effort to use the genetic data of 15,000 individuals to support genetic research. By using NFTs the project wants to ensure that the users submitting their genetic data are able to receive direct payment for their contributions.

Church has co developed "genome engineering" technologies since 1997 via either general homologous recombination (recA and lambda red) or via sequence specific nucleases. He co developed Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering (MAGE) and optimized CRISPR/Cas9, discovered by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for engineering a variety of genomes ranging from yeast to human. His laboratory's use of CRISPR in human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPS) is the latest contender for precise gene therapy. His team is the first to tackle a genome scale change in the genetic code. This was done in a 4.7 million basepair genome of an industrially useful microbe (E. coli) with the goal of making a safer and more productive strain; this strain uses non proteinogenic amino acids in proteins, and is metabolically and genetically isolated from other species. He has co invented several uses for DNA, including detectors for dark matter – Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), anti cancer "nano robots", and strategies for digital data storage that are over a million times denser than conventional disk drives. Together with polymerase, DNA can be used to sense and store variation in photons, nucleotides, or ions. They outlined specific experimental techniques that might be used to achieve what they termed a "functional connectome", as well as new technologies that will have to be developed in the course of the project, including wireless, minimally invasive methods to detect and manipulate neuronal activity, either utilizing microelectronics or synthetic biology. In one such proposed method, enzymatically produced DNA would serve as a "ticker tape record" of neuronal activity.

Church worked on engineered adeno associated viral vectors to evade innate immune and inflammatory responses. The research was published in Science Translational Medicine in 2021 and showed the possibility of a less immunogenic gene therapy with the new TLR9 edited Adeno associated viruses (AAV) as a safer viral vector. Based on the research, Church and a postdoc from his lab who was also the first author of the research, co founded Ally Therapeutics. In 2017, the Church lab at Harvard created adeno associated virus (AAV) based single combination gene therapy "for simultaneous treatment of several age related diseases", detailing the technology's efficacy in mitigating obesity, type II diabetes, heart failure, and renal failure in mice, and the work was published in PNAS. In early 2018, Rejuvenate Bio was launched from the Church lab at the Wyss Institute at Harvard to prevent and treat several age related diseases in dogs, extending their overall lifespan. In the February 2020, Rejuvenate Bio, the company co founded by Church, received an exclusive worldwide license from the Harvard Office of Technology Development to commercialise their gene therapy technology. As the co founder of Rejuvenate Bio in an interview Church said,
Science hasn't yet found a way to make complex animals like dogs live forever, so the next best thing we can do is find a way to maintain health for as long as possible during the aging process. The research group's progress toward gene therapy for aging has been very limited, however. A 2022 PNAS paper from the Church group has already been the subject of two corrections, one for incomplete conflict of interest disclosures and one for image duplication.

Church is a faculty member in the Consortium of Space Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Through his Harvard lab, Church has co founded around 50 Pathogenica (microbe and viral NGS diagnostics, 2009, with Yemi Adesokan), AbVitro (immunomes, 2010, with Francois Vigneault), Gen9 Bio (synthetic biology, 2009, with Joseph Jacobson and Drew Endy), EnEvolv (Genome Engineering), Joule Unlimited (SolarFuels, 2007, with Noubar Afeyan and David Berry), LS9 (green chemistry, 2005, with Chris Somerville, Jay Keasling, Vinod Khosla, Noubar Afeyan, and David Berry), and ReadCoor (spatial biology, 2016, with Richard Terry and Evan R. Daugharthy).

Church spearheaded the concept and implementation of open access sequencing hardware and shareable human medical data. He has noted the potential for re identification of human research participants and the tendency for consent forms to be opaque – proposing an alternative "open consent" mechanism. cautioning about the risk of synthetic DNA and proposing risk reduction via licensing and surveillance. His laboratory has a major bio safety engineering focus. and has spent a day teaching at The Jemicy School. He has championed citizen science, especially in the fields of synthetic biology and personal genomics. Since 2008, his team has been hosting an annual Genomes, Environments and Traits (GET) Conference with free online videos.

Church is a member of the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (RaDVaC), a group formed early in the SARS CoV 2 pandemic to create an easily produced, free and open source vaccine for self administration.

Church was partly funded from 2005 to 2007 by the nonprofit Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation. Church faced criticism for his response to a question from Der Spiegel where he speculated that it could be technically possible to make a Neanderthal by reconstructing its DNA and modifying living human cells accordingly. Church pointed out that he was not working on such a project.

Church has received accolades including election to the National Academy of Sciences (in 2011), and the National Academy of Engineering (in 2012). He received the American Society for Microbiology Promega Biotechnology Research Award and the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science of the Franklin Institute. He authored the NewScientist "top science book", Regenesis (on synthetic biology) with Ed Regis. Other honors include the Triennial International Steven Hoogendijk Award in 2010 and the Scientific American Top 50 twice (for "Designing artificial life" in 2005 and "The $1000 genome" in 2006). Newsweek picked Church for their 2008 "Power of Ideas" recognition in the category of Medicine (for the Personal Genome Project). In September 2010, Church was honored for his work in genetics with the Mass High Tech All Star Award. He is a member of the Research Advisory Board of SENS Research Foundation.

Church is married to fellow Harvard Medical School faculty member in genetics Ting Wu. Church has been outspoken in his support of following a vegan lifestyle, for reasons concerned with health, and with environmental and moral issues. When asked about his dietary choice, Church replied, "I've been vegan off and on since 1974 when I was inspired by participating in an MIT nutritional study, and quite strictly since 2004." He goes on to elaborate 4 reasons:medical (cholesterol in fish & dairy), energy conservation (up to 20 fold impact), cruelty ("organic" animals are deprived of medicines that humans use), and risks of spreading pathogens (not just the flu)  [noting that] veganism is an issue for which personal and global love of life, health and wealth align. It's a pity to lose parts of our humanity and planet just due to a lack of recipes. George identifies as a sentientist. Sentientism is a naturalistic worldview that grants moral consideration to all sentient beings. In the context of the Personal Genome Project, journalists at Forbes and Wired have noted Church's openness about his health issues, including dyslexia, narcolepsy, and high cholesterol (one of the motivations for his vegan diet). Church collaborated with transhumanist entrepreneur James Clement on the Supercentenarian Research Study, which aims to sequence the genomes of supercentenarians in hopes of discovering potential genetic factors behind their longevity. As of 2023, he is part of the Enhanced Games scientific and ethical advisory commission.