Article ID: CBB407365411

Synthetic biology as a technoscience: The case of minimal genomes and essential genes (2021)

unapi

This article examines how minimal genome research mobilizes philosophical concepts such as minimality and essentiality. Following a historical approach the article aims to uncover what function this terminology plays and which problems are raised by them. Specifically, four historical moments are examined, linked to the work of Harold J. Morowitz, Mitsuhiro Itaya, Eugene Koonin and Arcady Mushegian, and J. Craig Venter. What this survey shows is a historical shift away from historical questions about life or descriptive questions about specific organisms towards questions that explore biological possibilities: what are possible forms of minimal genomes, regardless of whether they exist in nature? Moreover, it highlights a fundamental ambiguity at work in minimal genome research between a universality claim and a standardization claim: does a minimal genome refer to the minimal gene set for any organism whatsoever? Or does it refer rather to a gene set that will provide stable, robust and predictable behaviour, suited for biotechnological applications? Two diagnoses are proposed for this ambiguity: a philosophical diagnosis of how minimal genome research either misunderstands the ontology of biological entities or philosophically misarticulates scientific practice. Secondly, a historical diagnosis that suggests that this ambiguity is part of a broader shift towards technoscience.

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Authors & Contributors
Bostanci, Adam
Alexander Bogner
W. Ford Doolittle
Balmer, Andrew
Giraud, Eva
Heur, Bas van
Concepts
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Biology
Synthetic biology; bioengineering
Genes
Ontology
Genomics
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
Modern
Places
United States
Italy
European Union
Belgium
Great Britain
Institutions
Ghent University
United States. National Institutes of Health. Office of Alternative Medicine
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