Kearnes Matthew, Kuch Declan, Johnston Angus
ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science & Technology (CBNS), School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science & Technology (CBNS), Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Life Sci Soc Policy. 2018 Sep 17;14(1):22. doi: 10.1186/s40504-018-0084-z.
This paper presents a collaboration between social scientists and a chemist exploring the promises for new therapy development at the intersection between synthetic biology and nanotechnology. Drawing from ethnographic studies of laboratories and a recorded discussion between the three authors, we interrogate the metaphors that underpin what Mackenzie (Futures 48:5-12 2013) has identified as a recursive relationship in the iconography of the life sciences and its infrastructure. Focusing specifically on the use of gene editing techniques in synthetic biology and bio-nanotechnology, we focus our analysis on the key metaphors of 'evolutionary life as hodge-podge' within which 'cutting' of DNA and the 'sticking' and 'binding' of engineered particles to proteins can be performed by researchers in laboratory settings. Taken together, we argue that these metaphors are consequential for understanding metaphors of life-as-machine and the prevalence of notions of 'engineering life'. Exploring the ways in which notions of cutting, targeting and life as an evolutionary hodgepodge prefigure a more contingent notion of engineering and synthesis we close by considering the interpretive implications for ethnomethodological approaches to contemporary life science research.
本文介绍了社会科学家与一位化学家之间的合作,探讨了合成生物学与纳米技术交叉领域新疗法开发的前景。基于对实验室的人种志研究以及三位作者之间的一次录音讨论,我们审视了支撑麦肯齐(《未来》48:5 - 12,2013年)所认定的生命科学及其基础设施图像学中递归关系的隐喻。具体聚焦于合成生物学和生物纳米技术中基因编辑技术的应用,我们将分析重点放在“进化生命如大杂烩”这一关键隐喻上,在这个隐喻中,研究人员在实验室环境中可以对DNA进行“切割”,并将工程粒子“粘贴”和“绑定”到蛋白质上。综合来看,我们认为这些隐喻对于理解“生命如机器”的隐喻以及“设计生命”概念的盛行具有重要意义。通过探讨切割、靶向以及生命作为进化大杂烩的概念如何预示着一种更具偶然性的工程与合成概念,我们最后考虑了这些隐喻对当代生命科学研究的民族方法学方法的解释意义。