Abstract
This article examines the historical roots of synthetic biology, highlighting the multiple meanings and understandings of the term. Synthetic biology as it is used today refers to an especially wide range of endeavors, embodying an equally wide range of aims, and having correspondingly various relations to the activities generally included in the discipline of biology. To address the question of what synthetic biology has to do with biology, this article illustrates some of the ways in which the entanglement of synthetic biology as the epitome of technoscience and synthetic biology as an alternative, artificial biology plays out in three different examples of synthetic biology—one current and two historical.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
1 For a fuller discussion of technoscience, see Bernadette Bensaude Vincent, ‘Technoscience and convergence: A transmutation of values?’ (2008).
2 From a lecture Loeb gave in Hamburg in 1911 (subsequently published in Popular Science Monthly, and reprinted in The mechanistic conception of life (University of Chicago Press, 1912).
3 The same account, and the same figures, had also appeared in his 1910 book, Théorie physico-chimique de la vie et générations spontanées.
4 As he explains: ‘Particularly beautiful osmotic cells may be produced by dropping a fragment of fused calcium chloride into a saturated solution of potassium carbonate or tribasic potassium phospate, the calcium chloride becoming surrounded by an osmotic membrane of calcium carbonate or calcium phosphate’ (1911: 124).
5 Keasling speaking at the Synthetic Biology 2.0 conference at Haas Business School University of California Berkeley (video available at: webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=15766).
References
Collingwood R.G. (1940). An essay on metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Edge (online magazine) (2008) Engineering biology: A talk with Drew Endy. URL (consulted July 2009): www.edge.org/3rd_culture/endy08/endy08_index.html
Forman P. (2007). The primacy of science in modernity, of technology in postmodernity and of ideology in the history of technology. History and Technology, 23, 1–152.
Forster A.C., & Church G.M. (2007). Synthetic biology projects in vitro. Genome Research, 17, 1 April, 1–6.
Fox Keller E. (2002) Making sense of life: Explaining biological development with models, metaphors and machines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Leduc S. (1910). Théorie physico-chimique de la vie et générations spontanées. Paris: A. Poinat.
Leduc S. (1911). The mechanism of life, trans. W.D. Butcher . New York: Rebman Co., and London: Heinemann.
Pauly P.J. (1987a). Controlling life: Jacques Loeb and the engineering ideal in biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pauly P.J. (1987b). The invention of artificial parthenogenesis. In Controlling life: Jacques Loeb and the engineering ideal in biology, ch. 5. Available online, URL (consulted July 2009): 8e.devbio.com/article.php?id=72
Turing A.M. (1952). The chemical basis of morphogenesis, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London, B237, 37–72.
Vincent B.B. (2008). Technoscience and convergence: A transmutation of values?, Paper presented at Summer School on ‘Ethics of Converging Technologies’, 21–26 September, Alsfeld, Germany, URL (accessed July 2009): hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/35/08/04/PDF/06BBV.pdf
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was given at the Synthetic Biology Conference, ENS, Paris, organized by Michel Morange, on 16 April 2009.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Keller, E. What Does Synthetic Biology Have to Do with Biology?. BioSocieties 4, 291–302 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1017/S1745855209990123
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1745855209990123