Before he became linked to the shocking creation of the world’s first gene-edited babies, Rice University professor Michael Deem was probably best known for the development of a mathematical model to improve the flu vaccine.

But that same year, he published little-noticed research that would turn out to be more influential: a 2010 study describing how a strange cluster of DNA sequences in bacteria acts as a sort of immune system to repel infections, the latest in the then-hot new field in molecular genetics.

“This research is teaching us things we could haven’t have imagined just a few years ago, but there’s an applied interest in this work as well,” Deem said in a Rice news release. “It’s believed, for instance, that the bacterial immune system uses a process … to silence disease genes it recognizes, and biotechnology companies may find it useful to develop this as a tool for silencing particular genes.”

He Jiankui, Deem’s co-author on the paper and then a Rice graduate student, would go on to apply related techniques. In China in November, He announced the birth of twin girls whose DNA he’d altered as embryos to help them resist infection with the HIV/AIDS virus. The bombshell declaration outraged the international scientific community because of concerns the DNA changes would be passed to future generations and could cause harm.

This week, He was fired from Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, in the wake of an investigation that seemed to confirm his claim about the girls.

The future is still uncertain for Deem, whose seeming involvement in the work is under investigation by Rice. The Associated Press, which broke the story, wrote that Deem worked with He on the project and quoted him on a few aspects, such as the consent parents gave and how the editing works like a vaccine.

RELATED: Chinese scientist and Houston professor claim to have created first gene-edited babies

The new spotlight is unfamiliar turf to the previously under-the-radar Deem, a bioengineering and physics professor who colleagues describe as brilliant, ambitious and bold. His interests range from the pursuit of a Newton’s laws of biology and the identification of materials for natural gas cars to the detection of a subtle electrocardiogram signal that might predict a heart attack.

Whether he ever received any training in human subjects research is another matter.

Reaction from colleagues

“I believe Michael Deem to be a person of integrity, do not believe he would knowingly do something dishonest or unethical,” said Ariel Fernandez, a former Rice professor now based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. “If he was indeed involved in this huge scientific miscarriage in a substantive way, I’d have to assume he was unaware of the ethical complexities associated with (gene editing),” Fernandez said.

Kirsten Matthews, a fellow in Rice’s Baker Institute who co-authored a policy paper with Deem on the flu vaccine research, added that he seems very much “the engineering/physicist type — a problem solver focused on how to fix things. I’m not sure he saw societal implications.”

Deem, who has not spoken publicly since talking to the AP, declined Chronicle interview requests through his lawyers. He previously didn’t respond to a Chronicle phone call and email.

Rice’s administration also declined to comment.

The university issued a statement in November saying Rice had “no knowledge of the work” and that “the work as described in press reports violates scientific conduct guidelines.” The statement called the work “inconsistent with ethical norms of the scientific community and Rice University.”

A ‘one of a kind’ scientist

Deem’s interest in science dates back to his public high school days in New Jersey, where he competed in state competitions in biology, chemistry and physics. “I really enjoyed those, even coming in 1st in physics one year,” he told the Biological Physicist in 2009.

Deem would go on to be much decorated and accomplished. A graduate of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard, he received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and MIT recognition as a Top Innovator Under 35 as a UCLA professor in the 1990s. And after coming to Rice in 2002, he received the Academy of Science, Medicine and Engineering of Texas’ O’Donnell Award. He’s on 15 U.S. patents and eight international ones.

It is Deem’s breadth that most stands out. He holds two professorships at Rice — one in biochemical and genetic engineering and one in physics and astronomy — and he’s also the founding director of a university program in synthetic and physical biology. He’s trained in statistical mechanics, an abstract basic science that deals with the collective behavior of large ensembles. His interests include evolution, immunology, materials science, computer modeling, vaccine development and genetic engineering, according to his Rice lab website.

“Only a very smart person with extreme confidence in his abilities and an extreme drive to succeed would dare to be as bold as Deem,” said Fernandez. “He surely wants to leave his mark as a scientist.”

But Fernandez and others say the extremely interdisciplinary nature of Deem’s work can be a handicap, hard to assess unless the person judging has a similarly broad background and interests. Also, scientists typically make their mark because of the depth of their work, not the breadth, they noted.

Fernandez says Deem is “one of a kind, maybe a genius, but some may say he still needs to be discovered. There’s a perception that we haven’t yet seen the home run we would expect given his potential.”

Colleagues add that though Deem’s research is first-rate, it doesn’t help that it is typically published in journals considered fairly middle of the road, not high-impact ones. He’s currently unfunded by the National Institutes of Health, the gold standard for biomedical research. His last NIH grant ended in 2014.

Still, his forte is the lab. The Rice Thresher, the student newspaper, reported he hasn’t taught an undergraduate class since fall 2013 and said student reviews from that class characterized him as extremely smart but a poor instructor, “a great researcher forced into a teaching role.”

In fall 2007, Deem hit it off with He, then new to the Rice campus from China. The 2010 publication of three significant papers by the two prompted Rice’s media relations office to put out a news release entitled “He’s on a hot streak” in which He said he looks forward to “making the move from theoretical work in Deem’s lab to experimental work in immunology.”

“Jiankui is a very high-impact student,” Deem said in the news release. “He has done a fantastic job here at Rice, and I am sure he will be highly successful in his career.”

The 2010 Deem-He papers included one that applied evolutionary biology statistical techniques to trade data to show that the world economy is more sensitive to recessionary shocks and recovers more slowly than 40 years ago because of globalization; the mathematical flu model work, which predicts which strain will become dominant in a given season; and the gene-editing one, which describes how natural selection and evolution influence the way bacteria acquire immunity from diseases.

Fernandez says the gene-editing in China was “very much inspired and based on” that last research.

Conflicting reports

AP’s reporting of Deem’s involvement in the gene-edited baby work in China stunned colleagues at Rice, partly because Deem is a theoretician who doesn’t maintain a “wet lab” where chemicals and drugs are tested.

The online publication Stat reported that the day story broke, Deem was accompanied into his students’ office area by Rice’s vice provost for research, and grad students and post-docs were told to turn over their files and research records as part of the university investigation.

Deem’s lawyers in December denied any involvement by Deem, issuing a statement that “Michael does not do human research and he did not do human research on this project.”

DEEM DEFENSE: Lawyers say Rice professor not involved in controversial gene-edited babies research

AP responded that it stood by its story, noting a reporter interviewed Deem.

To questions about whether the work might have been a hoax, Deem told the AP, “Of course the work occurred. I met the parents. I was there for the informed consent of the parents.” He said he “absolutely” thought they were able to understand the risks.

The AP, which reported that Deem holds a small stake in He’s two companies and sits on the scientific advisory boards of both, also wrote that the Rice professor defended He’s actions, noting the research team did earlier experiments on animals.

“We have multiple generations of animals that were genetically edited and produced viable offspring,” and a lot of research on unintended effects on other genes, said Deem.

In addition, Deem was listed as a collaborator on He’s website, which on Friday could not be accessed. In all, the two have eight publications together, including one in 2017 on sequencing a virus genome.

That doesn’t include a He paper on gene editing human embryos that lists Deem as a co-author that Stat last month reported was rejected by an international journal days before news broke about the gene-edited babies in China. Two people familiar with the peer-review process told Stat that the journal, which was not named in the story, cited ethical and scientific concerns raised by independent scientists. The paper, which describes altering a gene involved in an inherited disorder that leads to premature cardiovascular disease, did not report a pregnancy.

Rice officials this week gave no timetable for when they hope to wrap up the investigation.

Todd Ackerman can be reached at todd.ackerman@chron.com or on Twitter @chronmed