Life as engineerable material: an ethnographic study of synthetic biology

Synthetic biology is an emerging hybrid discipline that aims to apply an engineering approach to biology, in order to render biology controllable, predictable, and ultimately engineerable. Herein I explore synthetic biology as a project to control life at the molecular level through the lens of an ethnographic study of a newly formed academic synthetic biology research centre. Within this overarching narrative, I tease out two main stories regarding the field. First, I explore the topic of disciplinarity, investigating the work being done to establish synthetic biology as a hybrid discipline. Drawing on the ideas of repertoire, doability, and epistemic cultures, I explore the conflicts and compromises inherent in the attempt to form a hybrid discipline out of biology and engineering. I describe the strategies being employed to bridge this epistemic cultural divide, and the challenges in doing so. Second, I explore the work being done to bring the goals of the discipline to fruition. Synthetic biology’s dream of rendering biology engineerable is rooted in a reductionistic vision of life. This approach to biology raises both practical and conceptual issues. Thus, in exploring this story I address both the practical day-to-day work of synthetic biologists attempting to apply an engineering approach to biology, and the challenges these synthetic biologists face in conceptualising the products of that work. Third, I draw these stories together and show that synthetic biology is one among many disciplines emerging at the intersection of biology and engineering. I suggest that this fertile, if complicated, disciplinary crossroads may be the site of a conceptual shift in the way we ‘do’ and think about biology and ultimately, life.