Lee Gavin Williams

Lee-Gavin is a Molecular Biologist from South Africa with experience in a variety of biological fields. He has worked on a broad range of species from Cape Leopards and Rabbits, Sharks, Lobsters, Abalone, Oysters and Polychaetes. Additionally, he has a background in Molecular Cloning as a wine-biotechnologist working on the Cape grapevine and wine-making yeasts.

Since starting at Puregene in March 2021, Lee-Gavin has been involved in many molecular biology projects including large-scale DNA extraction (from Cannabis) and quantification. After completion of these projects, he and his colleagues were able to produce sequence data for 11,000 Cannabis plants, each for 5,500 molecular markers, using the company’s Iontorrent sequencer. Furthermore, he formed part of the team to produce Puregene’s first inhouse Whole-genome sequence. This is an enormously powerful tool which will continue to revolutionize molecular Cannabis breeding.

Some of Lee-Gavin’s other notable molecular biology skills used at Puregene include: Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR (KASP); Plant tissue preparation for GC analysis; Gilson Pipettemax protocol building; Microsatellite amplification and Sterile plant tissue culture and other skills that are required to efficiently function in laboratory conditions.

Lee-Gavin has also held the following positions at other companies

• Investor/Market Analyst at NYSE and NASDAQ ETF’s stocks and cryptocurrencies
• Research Assistant at Eawag, conducting Daphnia clone maintenance, Zooplanton taxonomy and microsattelite sequencing
• Microbiologist and Water Quality Technician at uShaka Marine World
• Marine Biologist at The National Research Foundation of South Africa
• Molecular Biologist and Research Biochemist at Stellenbosch University