George Church: The Future Without Limit

Text by Peter Miller

Photographs by Deanne Fitzmaurice

In the future, George Church believes, almost everything will be better because of genetics. If you have a medical problem, your doctor will be able to customize a treatment based on your specific DNA pattern. When you fill up your car, you won't be draining the world's dwindling supply of crude oil, because the fuel will come from microbes that have been genetically altered to produce biofuel. When you visit the zoo, you'll be able to take your children to the woolly mammoth or passenger pigeon exhibits, because these animals will no longer be extinct. You'll be able to do these things, that is, if the future turns out the way Church envisions itand he's doing everything he can to see that it does.

George McDonald Church is a big man, six feet five inches tall, with a full beard and a deep, reassuring voice. At his lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, the 59-year-old molecular engineer supervises a team of 90 or so graduate students, postdocs, visiting scientists, and staff as they undertake cutting-edge science. They're manipulating DNA, RNA, and proteinsthe basic tools of the genetics revolutionto accomplish futuristic tasks such as developing new medical therapies, creating biofuel technologies, and laying the groundwork for de-extinction.

As a consequence of the work Church has done in genetics, we know a lot more about him than you might expect. We know that he weighs about 246 pounds and that he has green eyes and blood type O. We know that he's suffered from dyslexia since he was a boy and narcolepsy since he was a teenager, had a heart attack in 1994, was treated for skin cancer in 2002, and underwent a colonoscopy in 2012. If you're curious, you can view images of his colon online.

We know all thisand much more, including the results of his brain scans, sleep studies, and the sequencing of his DNAbecause Church believes that the benefits of sharing such personal data vastly outweigh privacy concerns. The possibility that someone might exploit the data to steal his identity or carry out some other mischief worries him far less than the idea that by withholding such information, he might be delaying the onward march of science.

The Facebook Generation

That's why in 2005 he launched the Personal Genome Project, with the goal of sequencing and sharing the DNA of 100,000 volunteers. With an open-source database of that size, he believes, researchers everywhere will be able to meaningfully pursue the critical task of correlating genetic patterns with physical traits, illnesses, and exposure to environmental factors to find new cures for diseases and to gain basic insights into what makes each of us the way we are. Church, tagged as subject hu43860C, was first in line for testing. Since then, more than 13,000 people in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. have volunteered to join him, helping to establish what he playfully calls the Facebook of DNA.

Church has made a career of defying the impossible. Propelled by the dizzying speed of technological advancement since then, the Personal Genome Project is just one of Church's many attempts to overcome obstacles standing between him and the future.

"It's not for everyone," he says. "But I see a trend here. Openness has changed since many of us were young. People didn't use to talk about sexuality or cancer in polite society. This is the Facebook generation."

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George Church: The Future Without Limit