George Church is a geneticist, molecular engineer, and serial entrepreneur whose work has shaped nearly every major advance in reading, writing, and editing DNA over the past four decades. He holds the title of Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, serves as Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at both Harvard and MIT, and leads synthetic biology research at Harvard’s Wyss Institute. He has co-founded 38 companies and runs one of the most prolific academic labs in the world.
Pioneering DNA Sequencing
Church’s influence on modern genetics starts with his graduate work, where he developed foundational ideas for what became “next-generation” genome sequencing. This technology made it dramatically faster and cheaper to read DNA, replacing older methods that had taken years and billions of dollars to decode a single human genome. The shift he helped set in motion is the reason a person can now get their genome sequenced for a few hundred dollars in a matter of days.
Bringing CRISPR to Human Cells
In January 2013, Church’s lab published a landmark paper titled “RNA-guided human genome engineering via Cas9,” demonstrating that the bacterial CRISPR system could be engineered to edit DNA in human cells using custom guide RNA. This was published simultaneously with similar work from Feng Zhang’s lab at the Broad Institute, and both papers established CRISPR as a practical, programmable tool for human genome editing. Church also co-founded Editas Medicine alongside CRISPR pioneer and Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna to develop genome-editing therapies.
The Personal Genome Project
In 2005, Church launched the Harvard Personal Genome Project (PGP) with a simple but radical premise: volunteers would share their genomic data, health traits, and even cell samples freely and openly with the global research community. It started as a pilot with just 10 participants and has since grown into a global network of researchers at institutions worldwide. The PGP remains a unique public resource for collaborative research on human biology, built on the idea that individuals, not just institutions, should drive genomic science.
Writing Entire Genomes From Scratch
While much of genetics focuses on reading or editing existing DNA, Church has pushed hard toward building whole genomes from chemical components. In 2016, he co-authored a proposal in the journal Science for the Human Genome Project-Write (HGP-write), a project named to complement the original Human Genome Project (sometimes called “HGP-read,” completed in 2004). The primary goal of HGP-write is to reduce the cost of engineering and testing large genomes by a factor of 1,000 within 10 years. The project targets genomes ranging from 100 million to 100 billion base pairs, encompassing human cell lines and organisms important to agriculture, public health, and understanding human disease.
Gene Therapy for Aging
Church’s lab has also tackled aging itself. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, his team developed gene therapies targeting three genes associated with longevity. These genes play roles in metabolism and blood sugar regulation, calcium signaling in the heart and kidneys, and the tissue scarring and inflammation that worsen with age. Delivered to adult mice using a common viral carrier, these therapies showed the ability to mitigate four age-related diseases at once: obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart failure, and kidney failure. The work is unusual because it treats aging as a condition with treatable molecular roots rather than an inevitable decline.
38 Companies and Counting
Church is one of the most prolific academic entrepreneurs in biotechnology. His 38 co-founded companies span a remarkable range of ambitions. eGenesis Bio uses multiplexed gene editing to create human-compatible organs from pigs for transplant. Colossal Laboratories launched with $15 million in seed funding and the goal of de-extinction for the woolly mammoth, using DNA from preserved specimens combined with Asian elephant biology. Dyno Therapeutics applies artificial intelligence to design better viral delivery vehicles for gene therapy, with collaborations valued in the billions with major pharmaceutical companies. GRO Biosciences is building protein-based drugs using an expanded set of amino acid building blocks that go beyond what nature uses.
Narcolepsy as “A Feature, Not a Bug”
Church, who stands six feet five inches tall, has been open about living with narcolepsy, a condition marked by sudden bouts of sleep. He manages it without medication. He fasts from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., stands whenever possible, and constantly shifts his weight and balance to stimulate his nervous system and stay awake. Caffeine doesn’t help. He avoids the stimulant drugs typically prescribed for narcolepsy because, as his daughter (who also has narcolepsy) has reported, they seem to reduce creativity.
Church credits the condition with fueling his most important scientific breakthroughs. He has said that “almost all” of his visionary ideas have come while asleep or in the hazy edges of a narcoleptic nap, sometimes while dreaming. The concept for next-generation sequencing came to him this way. So did the idea of writing genomes from scratch. When his computer crashes, he takes it as a cue to lie down, and when he wakes, the solution to whatever problem he was wrestling with has often arrived. He has described narcolepsy as “a feature, not a bug,” a realization he says took him until his fifties or sixties to reach. The experience has made him a vocal advocate for neurodiversity.
Even when he falls asleep on conference panels, he can hear his name spoken and typically wakes up able to answer the question just asked without needing it repeated.
The Epstein Funding Controversy
Church’s career has not been without controversy. A Harvard report examining the university’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein found that Epstein had provided $686,000 in gifts to support Church’s research. Separately, between 2010 and 2015, donors whom Epstein introduced provided an additional $2 million for Church’s work, though the report clarified that those funds came from Leon Black, not from Epstein himself, and no attempt was made to conceal their source. The episode drew significant public criticism and raised broader questions about how academic science is funded and the due diligence institutions apply to their donors.