Genome engineering futures and the role of the Synthetic Biologist

Much of the debate surrounding the public, regulatory, IP, funding, security and ethical aspects of synthetic biology has been based on speculation about uncertain futures. This is likely to change as applications begin to emerge, but much still remains unknown. As has been seen in debates over GM crops and stem cells, interest groups and politics can play a central role in how these futures are played out, which can in turn shape scientific and technological pathways of innovation. Synthetic biologists have an important role to play in helping to influence outcomes, and it is crucial that their views and actions inform the emerging agenda. The purpose of this discussion-based workshop is to develop a number of possible future scenarios for synthetic biology. We will propose several starting points relating for example to costs of DNA synthesis, public attitudes, regulatory environments, biosafety and security, and intellectual property regimes. The focus will be on exploring interactions between factors – ethics and regulation, open source and commercial dynamics, biosecurity and militarisation – and how these may affect innovation pathways. The outcomes of the workshop will be fed back to the synthetic biology community and will ideally help to inform policy formation, as well as social science publications on synthetic biology innovation. The underlying analytical concept guiding the social science work emphasises the 'reflexivity' of synthetic biologists. This highlights the active role that they play in shaping social as well as technological genome engineering futures

Inovação responsável através de fronteiras: tensões, paradoxos e possibilidades

In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop

Bigger, Faster, Better? Rhetorics and Practices of Large-Scale Research in Contemporary Bioscience

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleEditorial for Special Issu

Life, time, and the organism:Temporal registers in the construction of life forms

In this paper, we articulate how time and temporalities are involved in the making of living things. For these purposes, we draw on an instructive episode concerning Norfolk Horn sheep. We attend to historical debates over the nature of the breed, whether it is extinct or not, and whether presently living exemplars are faithful copies of those that came before. We argue that there are features to these debates that are important to understanding contemporary configurations of life, time and the organism, especially as these are articulated within the field of synthetic biology. In particular, we highlight how organisms are configured within different material and semiotic assemblages that are always structured temporally. While we identify three distinct structures, namely the historical, phyletic and molecular registers, we do not regard the list as exhaustive. We also highlight how these structures are related to the care and value invested in the organisms at issue. Finally, because we are interested ultimately in ways of producing time, our subject matter requires us to think about historiographical practice reflexively. This draws us into dialogue with other scholars interested in time, not just historians, but also philosophers and sociologists, and into conversations with them about time as always multiple and never an inert background