# George Church on Reddit (u/George-Church)

Part of Scientists on Reddit, researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-07. Interactive version: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/scientists-on-reddit/george-church

George Church: Geneticist at Harvard and MIT.

- Reddit account: [u/George-Church](https://www.reddit.com/user/George-Church/) (AMA only)
- How we know it's theirs: [The 2016 r/science AMA, posted from this account](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/4fbcyv/)
- Where they post, in the records we retrieved: r/science (30), r/biotech (1)
- Known activity in the posts we found: 2016 to 2022
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Church_(geneticist)

## Moments

### u/George-Church in r/science, Apr 19, 2016 · Explains things

Replying to a redditor:

> Hi Dr. Church! My question is about using DNA as an archival medium. What is the long-term fidelity of storage like? Will information be lost due to mutation or just chemical degradation over time?

> The record for DNA persistence is 700,000 years (stored under less than ideal circumstances in a yukon horse).  Stored in a dry, anoxic state this could be longer.  As with other archival systems, redundancy is key.  No energy is required during storage, the physical format doesn't change, and the size/density is a million times better than other current methods.  Although the cost of copying is low (70 billion copies of a book was nothing), the cost of the original copy still needs to come down.

Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/4fbcyv/comment/d28p8vp/ · 2 points as of Nov 7, 2026