Jay Shendure is an American geneticist and professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington. He is known for his work on genomic technologies, including developing DNA-based diagnostic techniques, and one of the earliest successful demonstrations of second-generation DNA sequencing.
Research
Shendure's research focuses on the applications of genomic technologies and techniques for molecular and developmental biology. In 2005, his doctoral research with George M. Church resulted one of the first successful proof-of-concepts of next-generation DNA sequencing. Shendure's research group at the University of Washington pioneered exome sequencing and its application to Mendelian disorders, a strategy that has been applied to identify hundreds of disease-causing genes. Other notable accomplishments of Shendure's laboratory include the first whole genome sequencing of a human fetus using samples obtained non-invasively from the parents, and the sequencing of the HeLa genome in agreement with Henrietta Lacks' family.
He joined the faculty at the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington in 2007. He was tenured as an associate professor in 2011 and named full professor in 2015. He became the scientific director of the Brotman-Baty Institute in 2017 and in 2023 became the scientific director of the newly-launched Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology.
