A Pioneer of The Multiplex Frontier

George Church is at it again, this time using multiplex gene editing to create virus-proof cells, improve organ transplant success, and protect elephants.

Written byRashmi ShivniBrought to you byDrug Discovery News

| 10 min read

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Researchers in George Church’s lab modified wild type ADK proteins (left) in <em>E.coli</em>, furnishing them with an nonstandard amino acid (nsAA) meant to biocontain the resulting bacterial strain.

Researchers in George Church’s lab modified wild type ADK proteins (left) in E.coli, furnishing them with an nonstandard amino acid (nsAA) meant to biocontain the resulting bacterial strain.

Image credit:CREDIT: AKOS NYERGES/HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

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At Harvard University’s Longwood campus, synthetic biologist and geneticist George Church finds himself busy. If he’s not guiding his students in building the latest biotech prototypes, he’s navigating new business ventures with his former ones.

Church is known for being a trailblazer in the bioengineering world. In some disciplines, he may be most popular for his work with direct genome sequencing and the Human Genome Project. In others, he and his students gained the spotlight by proving the capabilities of CRISPR-Cas9 editing in human cells. But the projects that his team is slogging away on now might have the next greatest impact on the scientific community at large.

“Our lab is sitting at an extreme point on the curve, and we’ve found that most times when we were out on the extreme, it's only a couple of years before we're overtaken by a tsunami of possibilities,” Church said.

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Meet the Author

Rashmi Shivni
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Rashmi is a freelance science writer with an MSc in microbiology from Northern Illinois University. She investigated the biochemistries of photosynthesis and whether we can find signs of microbial photosynthetic life on other worlds. She has a background in science journalism and hopes to continue making science accessible for all as she communicates her own research. Her writing appeared in PBS NewsHour, Audubon Magazine, Symmetry Magazine, and the Fermilab newsroom.
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