A feeling for the (micro)organism? Yeastiness, organism agnosticism and whole genome synthesis

Abstract

Synthetic biologists attempt to apply engineering principles to biological systems. This involves treating organisms as "chassis"neutral frames into which synthetic constructs can be inserted, rather than living entities with distinctive features. Here we focus on a particularly charismatic organism -Saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewer's yeast)and the attempt to make a synthetic version of its genome. We argue that the "personality" of the yeast and the affective relationship scientists (and others) have to it, challenges the "organism agnosticism" of synthetic biology. This leads us to ask whether synthetic biologists have straightforwardly exploitative relationships to the organisms they work on. We connect this "feeling for the (micro)organism" to the activity of engineering whole genomes, rather than discrete genetic parts. We argue that this connection is significant because we are likely to see an escalation in attempts to synthesize complete genomes in the future, including the human genome.

Responsible research and innovation meets multispecies studies: why RRI needs to be a more-than-human exercise

“…Multispecies theorists such as Despret (2004Despret ( , 2013Despret ( , 2015 and Candea (2013) have demonstrated that researchers who oblige themselves to listen and respond to non-humans, as partners in inquiry, inquire more openly; by working to generate shared concerns with these partners, they remain open to being surprised by them. While such case studies have typically focused on charismatic animals, we have observed similarly productive research participation by baker's yeast (Calvert and Szymanski 2020;Calvert 2018), andBeth Greenhough (2012) has suggested that common cold viruses and humans have participated in similar relationships. Multispecies case studies thus vividly demonstrate that RRI cannot be separated from 'the research itself' because responsiveness changes the shape of knowledge construction and constructs ethical obligations simultaneously.…”

Metabolism Instead of Machine: Towards an Ontology of Hybrids

“…Based on this compositional view and the associated assumptions about the modular construction of the metabolism, cell factories are framed as technological, rather than living, matter. Synthetic biology's tendency to describe standardisable parts instead of living beings with distinctive features has been called organism agnosticism (Calvert & Szymanski, 2020). Its opponents emphasise that the socalled chassis or host cell, which is used to build the desired metabolic pathways, is, from the outset, not a technological machine-part, but a living cell.…”

When Extracting Is Not Subtracting: Accounting for Organism-technologies as Stakeholders in Microbial Resource Extraction through an Experiment in Discursive Biomimicry

“…The organism may be entirely absent from discussions concerned with engineering genetic pathways or circuits, and cellular responses to intracellular engineering are routinely construed as interruptions or “bugs” that need to be engineered away. The synthetic yeast project is a notable exception to this general pattern (Calvert and Szymanski 2020). This project is about re-placing a digital yeast genome: editing an informational text on a computer, transforming that in silico text into physical molecules, and convincing yeast to take up and incorporate those molecules into the physical genome it already contains.…”