The sacred and the profane: biotechnology, rationality, and public debate

Davies G, 2006. The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Environment and Planning A, 38(3), pp. 423 – 443 DOI: 10.1068/a37387This paper explores the forms of argumentation employed by participants in a recent public engagement process in the United Kingdom around new technologies for organ transplantation, with specific reference to xenotransplantation and stem-cell research. Two forms of reasoning recur throughout participants’ deliberations which challenge specialist framing of this issue. First, an often scatological humour and sense of the profane are evident in the ways in which participants discuss the bodily transformations that such technologies demand. Second, a sense of the sacred, in which new biotechnologies are viewed as against nature or in which commercial companies are ‘playing god’, is a repetitive and well-recognised concern. Such forms of reasoning are frequently dismissed by policymakers as ‘uninformed gut reactions’. Yet they also form a significant part of the repertoire of scientists themselves as they proclaim the hope of new medical breakthroughs, or seek to reconstruct ideas of the body to facilitate new biotechnological transformations. Through questioning of assumptions in Habermas’s notion of discourse ethics, and exploring the importance of hybridity and corporeality as concepts in ethical thinking, the author suggests that, far from being ill-formed opinions, such reasonings perform an important function for thinking through the ontological significance of the corporealisation of these proposed new forms of human and animal bodies

A gene encoding a new cold-active lipase from an Antarctic isolate of Penicillium expansum

Cold-active lipases are of significant interest as biocatalysts in industrial processes. We have identified a lipase that displayed activity towards long carbon-chain-p-nitrophenyl substrates (C12–C18) at 25 °C from the culture supernatant of an Antarctic Penicillium expansum strain assigned P. expansum SM3. Zymography revealed a protein band of around 30 kDa with activity towards olive oil. DNA fragments of a lipase gene designated as lipPE were isolated from the genomic DNA of P. expansum SM3 by genomic walking PCR. Subsequently, the complete genomic lipPE gene was amplified using gene-specific primers designed from the 5′- and 3′-regions. Reverse transcription PCR was used to amplify the lipPE cDNA. The deduced amino acid sequence consisted of 285 residues that included a predicted signal peptide. Three peptides identified by LC/MS/MS analysis of the proteins in the culture supernatant of P. expansum were also present in the deduced amino acid sequence of the lipPE gene suggesting that this gene encoded the lipase identified by initial zymogram activity analysis. Full analysis of the nucleotide and the deduced amino acid sequences indicated that the lipPE gene encodes a novel P. expansum lipase. The lipPE gene was expressed in E. coli for further characterization of the enzyme with a view of assessing its suitability for industrial applications