Article ID: CBB285298940

Making DNA and Its Becoming an Experimental Commodity (2019)

unapi

Berry, Dominic (Author)


History and Technology
Volume: 35
Issue: 4
Pages: 374-404


Publication Date: 2019
Edition Details: Special Issue: Biology and Technology Reframed: Historiographical Reflections and Opportunities
Language: English

This paper pursues the history of biology and technology in tandem. It focuses on DNA’s materiality regardless of informational properties. My emphasis on ‘making’ integrates attention to cultures of work in material histories of biology with analyses of the development of technical apparatuses and machines. When it comes to the history of DNA synthesis our materials are as much chemical as they are biological, which means that there is really a third history present, one that also needs to be drawn in, but on its own terms. I demonstrate the ways in which different chemistries have been combined with different technologies, all together affording different arrangements of personnel and biological science. It is a history of how synthesised DNA first came to be, became desired, and became a commodity, available for inclusion in a wide variety of experiments and experimental systems. This method could be replicated for other ‘experimental commodities’.

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Article Karen A. Rader (2019) Introduction to the Special Issue Biology and Technology Reframed: Historiographical Reflections and Opportunities. History and Technology (pp. 366-373). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB285298940/

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Authors & Contributors
Fabrizio Rufo
Liggieri, Kevin
Dimond, Christopher C.
Weber, Marcel
Watson, James D.
Suárez-Díaz, Edna
Concepts
Experimental biology
Genetics
Experiments and experimentation
DNA; RNA
Molecular biology
Biology
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
21st century
20th century, early
19th century
Places
Soviet Union
United States
Russia
Great Britain
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