George Church

George Church (born August 28, 1954) is an American molecular geneticist. He was one of the people who set out to analyse the human genetic code, the sequence of genes in human DNA.Weintraub, Karen 2011. Will we all be tweaking our own genetic code? BBC News: Technology 

Church is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School,Harvard Medical School Department of Genetics HMS Genetics Faculty Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT,Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology HST  and a core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

With Walter Gilbert he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984,Church G. & Gilbert W. 1984. Genomic sequencing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 81 (7): 1991–1995.  PMID 6326095 and helped start the Human Genome Project while he was a research scientist at newly formed Biogen Inc.Cook-Deegan R.M. 1989. The Alta summit, December 1984. Genomics 5 (3): 661–663. PMID 2613249

He invented ways of analysing huge amounts of chemical data,Church G. & Kieffer-Higgins S. 1988. Multiplex DNA sequencing. Science 240 (4849): 185–188. PMID 3353714 homologous recombination methods,Link A.J.; Phillips D. and Church G.M. 1997. Methods for generating precise deletions and insertions in the genome of wild-type Escherichia coli: Application to open reading frame characterization. Journal of bacteriology 179 (20): 6228–6237. PMID 9335267 and DNA array synthesizers. Automated sequencing & software in Genome Therapeutics Corp. gave the first commercial genome sequence, (the human pathogen, Helicobacter pylori) in 1994.Editorial: Capitalizing on the genome. Nature Genetics 13 (1): 1–5. 1996.  PMID 8673083

Church started the Personal Genome Project (PGP) in 2005,Church G.M. 2005. The Personal Genome Project. Molecular Systems Biology 1: E1–E3.  PMID 16729065 and in 2007 he founded the U.S. personal genomics company Knome (with Jorge Conde and Sundar Subramaniam).

Church does research on synthetic (artificial) biology and is director of the U.S. Department of Energy Center on Bioenergy at Harvard & MIT,DOE Genomes to Life Center and Director of the National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence in Genomic Science at Harvard.Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science Awards

He has been advisor to 22 companies. He co-founded Codon Devices, a biotech startup dedicated to synthetic biology. It produces DNA sequences to order.  He co-founded LS9, which is focused on biofuels or renewable petroleum technologies.San Francisco Business Times - March 12, 2007

In 2009 he founded Pathogenica, with Yemi Adesokan, in order to pioneer commercial applications for pathogen sequencing technology.

In September 2010, Dr. Church was honored for his work in genetics with the Mass High Tech All-Star Award. He is a senior editor for Molecular Systems Biology.

According to Forbes, Church suffers from narcolepsy.

References

Other websites
 New Polony DNA Sequencing Methods
 Biosketch on Edge.org 
 Knome homepage
 LS9 Inc. homepage
 How the Personal Genome Project could unlock the mysteries of life

Category:1954 births
Category:American geneticists
Category:Scientists from Boston
Category:Scientists from Florida
Category:Living people