Remembering our friend Alessandro Coatti

We were devastated to learn that our dear friend Alessandro Coatti, known to us as Ale, had been killed. We think the world should know him for who he was and what he achieved, rather than the circumstances of his death.

Ale was the kindest person, and the most diligent colleague, one could ever hope to know. Born in 1986, he trained as a molecular and cellular biologist in Italy before pursuing research in neuroscience in Italy and the UK. During the eight years he spent working at the Royal Society of Biology (RSB), both of us worked with him on several different areas of science policy, foremost among which was genome editing.

One of us (Sophia) was working at the UK's Science Media Centre when we first got to know Ale. His expertise in genome editing, combined with his role as secretariat of the Animal Science Group at the RSB, meant that we spoke frequently. Our professional interactions soon developed into a friendship, and we spent many happy hours talking about life and our dreams for the future.

Following the He Jiankui genome editing scandal (see BioNews 977), and a subsequent call for a moratorium on heritable genome editing (see BioNews 991), Ale wrote the following words. They were sensible then, and they are still sensible now.

'Any new technological development, which has the potential to deliver benefits, has also the potential to alter us and our environment. No technological application comes without consequences that must be managed carefully. The best strategies to deal with them shouldn’t be based on quick fixes, but a detailed understanding of the factors involved and the potential routes to a desired outcome.'

More recently, Ale gave evidence to a Public Bill Committee in Parliament, as it scrutinised the bill that ultimately became the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023. Whether Ale was discussing genome editing in that specialist context or in a human context, he had a formidable grasp of both the scientific and governance aspects of the subject, as is obvious from reading his contributions in the transcript of that session. He was proud to have taken part, and he later wrote a personal reflection on the experience.

Ale drew connections between his professional accomplishments, his personal life and his convictions. Writing in July 2019, on the occasion of Pride and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York, Ale cited the filmmaker, artist and author Derek Jarman. Specifically, Ale quoted a passage in the book Chroma: A Book of Colour, in which Jarman recalls writing the childhood words: 'Dear Minister, I am a 12-year-old Queer. I want to be a Queer artist like Michelangelo, Leonardo or Tchaikovsky.'

To this, Ale added childhood recollections of his own, saying 'like Derek, I was queer too'. Ale then explained why he embraced science during his youth, saying: 'It was the idea that the scientific method could be used to challenge preconceived ideas; it was self-correcting and anti-dogmatic; it was a method that opened our eyes to the external world of phenomena and relied on human tenacity, sometimes in the face of opposition or even discrimination.'

In the same piece, Ale paid tribute to two of his scientific heroes – the Italian neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini and the British cosmologist Peter Coles.

In recent times, Ale would discuss these matters with us in one of his favourite London pubs, the Old China Hand in Clerkenwell. The last time that one of us (Sandy) met Ale there, he mentioned how much he admired Ettore Scola's film Una Giornata Particolare, which offers a vivid account of marginalisation and persecution in Italy prior to the Second World War.

There is no better way to conclude this piece, and to sum up our friend, than with a statement he made in an email to friends and colleagues in January this year. 'Science and technology should serve a more just and equitable society.'

We will miss you so much, Ale.