Imagine growing a human liver inside a pig. 

Storing data in your DNA. 

Reversing age. 

Imagine your genome as the source code of your life. That can be mapped, studied – and edited. Bent to will.

Pioneering genetic locksmith George Church is doing just that. 

Meet the Master of Genome

Church wears the look of a shabby wizard from mythological fiction, has been rumoured to have fed on nothing but nutrient broth for years as a student, and once wore blinders to his lab to make a point about ‘tunnel vision’. He insists “your genetics are not your destiny”. That gene-editing a super class of human into being - one that is virus, disease and maybe even death proof - is not just necessary but inevitable. Visionary – brain-bending – ideas he often ascribes to his narcolepsy, a birth condition defined by sudden bouts of sleep.

Born dyslexic, with OCD & ADD, Church’s fascination with the way things fit and don’t fit in nature began early. At 10 he was trying to graft one fruit tree onto another in his backyard. As an undergrad student at Duke University, he simultaneously completed two degrees (chemistry and zoology) in two years. As a graduate he helped solve the structure of transfer RNA. Later he was expelled from his PhD programme by the same university for spending too much time in the lab. Eventually, Harvard ‘rescued’ him. And we’ve only just scraped the surface of what is loosely referred to as ‘Church lore’.

Tinker. Tailor. Scientist. Sage.

Church maintains that he is not a scientist but an engineer. That he prefers the self-image of “poking holes in the fabric of science and engineering”. His work casually evokes the visual of a mad scientist working, not on the slab of a laboratory, but from the dimly lit corner of a basement. At least that’s how wild some of his ideas are. And all of them begin with the foundational pillar of life – the genome. 

With his start-up Colossal, Church is working on ‘de-extinction’, trying to resurrect the wooly mammoth as a way to fight climate change. The way to do it is to create a ‘cold-resistant elephant’ that has borrowed genes from the extinct mammal. Basically, upend evolution which also raises questions about feasibility and unforeseen ecological consequences.

The geneticist is also working on ‘de-aging’. With Rejuvenate Bio, he is using targeted gene-editing to reverse age. Trials are already on in mice and dogs. Humans are next. But the mission again raises philosophical, ethical and economic concerns about the idea of ‘living forever’.

The Church lab is also engineering living cells immune to all known viruses. The implications further down the line could be as vast as infestation-free crop and livestock or as personal as a disease free body. But then again, what about the bioethical concerns around the existence of such technologies? Or the power that comes with the ability to wield them? 

The maverick genius has speculated about using synthetic biology to create ‘brain-to-brain’ interfaces that could turn sci-fiction like ‘telepathy’ into reality. He has also argued for the use of gene editing to not only prevent disease but to enhance human intelligence, biohack improvements in strength, vision, endurance and ultimately create new synthetic life forms that do not exist in nature. It’s all edge-of-your-seat stuff. But if anyone can do it, it’s him. 

Church, after all, has laid down the foundation of gene technology. In 1984, he co-published the world’s first genome sequencing method. In 1990, he helped launch The Human Genome Project, which successfully sequenced the entire human genome in 2003 - after a staggering 3 billion dollars in investment. In 2005, he released the audacious Personal Genome Project, the planet’s first open-access genome database. He declassified his own genome as part of his long-held belief that ‘science should be transparent’. 

In 2012, Church turned his book  Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves into 70 billion copies. For reference, that is roughly 10 times the earth’s population at the time. How did he do it? By encoding the book in DNA. Most recently, his team has managed to encode a terabyte of data into mice while only using a ‘billionth of its body’. In his lab, the geneticist claims, “radical technology meets radical application”.

Among The Believers

The prolificity of Church’s work is only matched by the world-shaping graph of his ideas and opinions. “Many revolutions look irrelevant before they change everything,” he says. The Church lab – one of the best funded in the world – has managed to successfully grow ‘brain organoids’ in pigs and is on its way to growing ‘entire human organs’. He is working on inoculating mosquitoes to, once and for all, cure us from malaria. His research has also led to ‘supercell’ therapies that could revolutionise the way cell therapy works. As is custom, the scientist has offered his own skin cells for research. Much like the radical nature of his practice, Church has liberally offered his blood, body and DNA for furthering scientific discovery.

In 2018, he was one of the few people to come out in support of the Chinese scientist He Jiankui, after he created the world’s first gene-edited babies with the help of the editing technology CRISPR. His start-up Nebula Genomics wants to offer people the chance to sequence their genome and put it on the blockchain. In 2019, he launched Digid8, a dating app that matches people based on their genetic footprint; the intent, the scientist claimed, was to stifle genetically inherited diseases. People believe it is the careless manipulation of natural law. Evidently, not everything Church says or does is met with redemption. 

He has been called ‘brash’, a ‘eugenicist’, a ‘scientist on the loose’. Some whose mythology outstrips his actual work. Someone who's trying to play god. But are his mind-bending ideas, merely gimmicks dressed in the vocabulary of the ‘divine’, or a necessity perpetuated by centuries of conflict, crime, hate, disease, disability and disillusion? Are we really the best versions of ourselves, or could we become better? 

Even if we can, should we?

At Synapse 2025, he will unlock his drawer of jaw-dropping ideas on gene editing, health, evolution, immortality, extinction, and superhumanism in the age of AI. And the ethical, social, and political backdrop to a poetic, provocative, and possibly prophetic horizon.  

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