chip) synthesizers for combinatorial libraries and assembling large genome segments. He co-developed Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering (MAGE) and optimized CRISPR/Cas9, discovered by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for engineering a variety of genomes ranging from yeast to human. His laboratory's use of CRISPR in human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPS) is the latest contender for precise gene therapy. His team is the first to tackle a genome-scale change in the genetic code. This was done in a 4.7 million basepair genome of an industrially useful microbe (E. coli) with the goal of making a safer and more productive strain; this strain uses non-proteinogenic amino acids in proteins, and is metabolically and genetically isolated from other species. He has co-invented several uses for DNA, including detectors for dark matter – Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), anti-cancer "nano-robots", and strategies for digital data storage that are over a million times denser than conventional disk drives. Together with polymerase, DNA can be used to sense and store variation in photons, nucleotides, or ions. The BRAIN initiative Church was part of a team who, in a 2012 scientific commentary, proposed a Brain Activity Map, later named BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies). They outlined specific experimental techniques that might be used to achieve what they termed a "functional connectome", as well as new technologies that will have to be developed in the course of the project, including wireless, minimally invasive methods to detect and manipulate neuronal activity, either utilizing microelectronics or synthetic biology. In one such proposed method, enzymatically produced DNA would serve as a "ticker tape record" of neuronal activity. Gene therapy, ageing, and age reversal Church worked on engineered adeno-associated viral vectors to evade innate immune and inflammatory responses. The research was published in Science Translational Medicine in 2021 and showed the possibility of a less immunogenic gene therapy with the new TLR9-edited Adeno-associated viruses (AAV) as a safer viral vector. Based on the research, Church and a postdoc from his lab who was also the first-author of the research, co-founded Ally Therapeutics. In 2017, the Church lab at Harvard created adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based single combination gene therapy "for simultaneous treatment of several age-related diseases", detailing the technology's efficacy in mitigating obesity, type II diabetes, heart failure, and renal failure in mice, and the work was published in PNAS. In early 2018, Rejuvenate Bio was launched from the Church lab