Andrew Christopher George Porter, known to everyone as Andy, was a dedicated, gifted, and generous scientist and teacher, fascinated by DNA replication, repair and expression and, in particular, genetic engineering (Fig. 1).

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Andy Porter lecturing in October 2022.

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Andy was born on 17 August 1955 in Knutsford, Sheffield, the second son of George Porter and Stella Jean Brooke. Andy died on 30 August 2023, survived by mum Stella, brother John Brooke, wife Margaret Jane Dallman and son Alexander Dallman-Porter.

Andy spent his early years at Westbourne School in Sheffield and recounted with fondness running free with his brother in their local woods on Abbey Lane. Andy’s father, George Porter OM FRS FRSE, Baron Porter of Luddenham, was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967. George had an extremely busy professional life, which led Andy’s parents to choose an education in boarding schools for their children. Andy went from Westbourne to board at Oundle School in Northamptonshire, and later for his ‘A’ levels to Westminster School in London. Andy used to say that his parents chose Oundle for the quality of the science education after a thorough search of schools, but that by the time he actually boarded there the emphasis had switched from science to religion! Andy’s memories of family, childhood and school were happy. While clearly proud, Andy never boasted, least of all about his father. It took several years working with Andy for one of us to hear from him, when asked in a casual conversation whether he knew the Royal Institution in London, that he had lived there while George was the Director, at the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Andy’s first degree was a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Bristol. Bristol was also important for Andy because he met Maggie there; they went on to marry in 1997. Following his BSc in Biochemistry, Andy completed a D.Phil. at the University of Oxford, where he was always impressed with the quality of students. In Oxford, Andy was a student at Linacre College, a graduate college. He carried out experimental work at the Microbiology Unit in the Department of Biochemistry, supervised by Professor Joel Mandelson, and culminating in a D.Phil. thesis on “the Biochemistry and Genetics of Bacterial Sporulation”. From this time came his first PubMed paper, published in Analytical Biochemistry in 1981, and - unusually for a student - with Andy as sole author.

The Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University was Andy’s first postdoctoral destination. He worked with Robert D. Simoni, who was interested in cell membrane structure and function. In Robert’s lab, Andy worked on the characterisation of the unc operon of Escherichia coli, which encodes the proton-translocating F0F1-ATP synthase. Andy used a variety of molecular biology techniques to identify the operon promoter and perform a structure/function mutagenic analysis of the synthase b subunit. He published three papers from this work between 1983–1985.

Andy’s second postdoc was at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories [now Cancer Research UK] in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, working with George R Stark and Ian M. Kerr. The topic of investigation was the regulation of interferon-inducible genes in human cells, and the work resulted in four publications between 1986–1991. Importantly, Andy and colleagues reported a novel α/β interferon response element at DNA level, which controls transcriptional activation by these cytokines.

In 1988 Andy returned to the Department of Biochemistry at Oxford University with a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship, leading a blossoming research group. He had become fascinated with gene targeting - the accurate modification of genes using homologous recombination - and its potential, becoming one of its earliest proponents. Gene targeting, nowadays called gene or genome editing and relying on chimeric DNA-binding proteins like CRISPR and various molecular mechanisms, is considered the most promising technology in modern medicine. The first CRISPR-based medicine marketing approval, for exagamglogene autotemcel (trademark Casgevy), used to treat beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease, was given in late 2023, shortly after Andy’s death. Andy published a Gene Therapy review entitled “Therapeutic gene targeting” in 1998, a prescient publication 25 years before this marketing approval [1].

Despite its technical difficulty and extremely low efficiency, Andy firmly believed in the possibilities of the fledging gene targeting technology for both genetic analysis and gene therapy. First in Oxford and from 1994 in his “Gene Targeting Group” at the Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre [now the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences], Andy and colleagues went on to demonstrate that gene targeting could be used in human cells to introduce large-scale genetic modifications, produce diploid knockouts, and place endogenous genes under inducible regulation. Andy was also interested in improving the efficiency of gene targeting, both to facilitate the research process and to achieve targeting frequencies with therapeutic potential, and explored a variety of factors that impacted the technology both positively and negatively.

From 2004 Andy’s group was based at the Centre for Haematology, Department of Immunology and Inflammation, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, where he was Reader in Haematology. Here Andy adopted a variety of chimeric genome editing proteins to facilitate the process as they became available. He remained interested in multiple aspects of DNA metabolism and his lab also explored the regulation of cell cycle and DNA repair, and particularly various aspects of topoisomerase activity.

Andy kept an ongoing collaboration with wife Maggie throughout their professional lives. Among several achievements, their labs jointly produced a mouse knockout of interferon β, which allowed thorough analyses of the role of this cytokine in immune responses.

Admirably, Andy was active at the bench throughout his professional life and personally trained a large number of graduate students and postdocs. His most recent appointment at Imperial College gave him the opportunity to develop a teaching portfolio for undergraduate and postgraduate students, who benefited from the opportunity to learn from Andy’s extensive theoretical and practical skills in genetics and genomics. Andy was also involved in public engagement, particularly through The Salter’s Company, one of London’s Livery companies, dedicated to excellence in chemistry education, civic life, fellowship and charitable giving and where for many years Andy was a Liveryman. His appointment in 2022 to the Board of The Salter’s Institute, the educational charity of the Company, further strengthened his involvement in chemistry-based educational programmes.

Andy enjoyed music (he played piano and guitar) and sports (being a keen tennis player, skier and sailor). He was a devoted son, husband, father and friend. The COVID-19 pandemic pained him particularly because he could not visit his mother, and having to go again into isolation for his own cancer treatment was not something he relished for the same reason. He was resourceful and never short of ideas. Very early in the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped in an initiative led by his son Alex and others, mass-producing at home face shields for clinical use, thus contributing to overcome the shortage of personal protection equipment. Andy was generous, gracious and patient in passing his knowledge to others, and was universally appreciated as an extremely competent, approachable, reliable, constructive and humble colleague. Above all, we will remember him for his great kindness.