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Making big promises come true? Articulating and realizing value in synthetic biology

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Abstract

Synthetic biology is an emerging approach to biotechnology that strives to use engineering principles and practices to design and make new organisms. Proponents of synthetic biology have big aspirations for this field, citing potential for an industrial revolution in biotechnology. This article is concerned with how value is being negotiated and constituted through practice in synthetic biology – through the promises being made, through the objects and products being produced, through the initiatives and institutions being established, and through the work practices and justificatory strategies of synthetic biologists. In particular, I focus on negotiations surrounding the making, use and circulation of BioBrick™ standard biological parts. BioBricks are presented as tools that will make genetic engineering more efficient and reliable, and are accompanied by a particular imagination of innovation and value creation in synthetic biology. But exploring valuation practices in action reveals a number of sites of ambivalence and contestation over the BioBrick approach to synthetic biology. Through a series of vignettes, I show how these negotiations over the promises and practices surrounding BioBricks are configuring the epistemic foundations and design space of the field, and are helping to define what value means in synthetic biology.

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Notes

  1. A number of different core pursuits are identified under the heading of synthetic biology, including DNA ‘parts-based’ approaches, whole-genome engineering, and protocell work (O’Malley et al, 2008).

  2. It should be noted that I have helped to organize some of these events, in my role as one of the coordinators of a research network in synthetic biology (the UK Synthetic Biology Standards Network, which was funded from 2008 to 2011 by four of the UK Research Councils).

  3. Such genetic elements include, for example, promoters, terminators, gene-coding sequences and ribosome binding sites.

  4. Idempotent: not changed in value following multiplication by itself (Collins English Dictionary, 6th Edition).

  5. See Kohler (1994) for an account of the moral economy developed by genetics researchers using Drosophila as a shared model organism.

  6. The precise number of alternative standards proposed depends on exactly how one defines the standard, but at least six variations on the original BioBrick design have been formally proposed by individuals and laboratories in the United States and Europe.

  7. Some high-profile synthetic biology institutions are now beginning to devote concerted resource and attention to the challenge of characterizing biological parts, including the Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation at Imperial College London, and the BIOFAB: International Open Facility Advancing Biotechnology, based in California.

  8. See Brown (2013) for an exploration of similar deliberations between present and future value in the context of umbilical blood cord banking.

  9. The Requests for Comments process is borrowed explicitly from the standard-setting approach used by the Internet Engineering Task Force, and for the synthetic biology community is managed by the BioBricks Foundation (see biobricks.org/programs/technical-standards-framework/, accessed 29 July 2013).

  10. See biobricks.org/bpa/, accessed 29 July 2013. Since its launch in June 2011, there has so far been little uptake of this mechanism across the synthetic biology community.

  11. As Lezaun notes in his contribution to this issue, practices of both valuation and de-valuation are simultaneously at play in structuring new moral economies in the contemporary life sciences.

  12. In a similar vein, Cooper (2008) notes that ideas of emergence in biology are also framed as being problematic in US policy discourse around infectious disease and bioterrorism, which talks of ‘waging war’ or mobilizing against biological emergence (pp.28–31).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the researchers in the synthetic biology community who have been and continue to be so generous with their time and insights, during both formal interviews and informal conversations. Versions of this article have been presented at the ‘Making it Big’ workshop at the University of Exeter (March 2011), at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (October 2010) and at the University of Chicago (November 2011), and in particular I would like to thank Gail Davies, Michael Fisch, Sabina Leonelli and Kaushik Sunder Rajan for their constructive feedback. My attendance at meetings and workshops has been supported through funding from the UK Synthetic Biology Standards Network (BB/F018746/1) and the ESRC Genomics Forum at the University of Edinburgh.

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  1. Science, Technology & Innovation Studies, The University of Edinburgh, Chisholm House, High School Yards, Edinburgh, EH1 1LZ, UK

    Emma K Frow

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Frow, E. Making big promises come true? Articulating and realizing value in synthetic biology. BioSocieties 8, 432–448 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2013.28

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