SynBERC:Human Practice

Overview

The defining goal of SynBERC is to make biology into an engineering discipline. To this end, Thrusts 1 through 3 link evolved systems and designed systems, with emphasis on organizing and refining elements of biology through design rules that enable the engineering of complex integrated biological systems. Thrust 4 examines synthetic biology within a frame of human practices, with reciprocal emphasis on ways that economic, political, and cultural forces may condition the development of synthetic biology and on ways that synthetic biology may significantly inform human security, health, and welfare. It includes both applied research modules on Intellectual Property and Commons Issues and on Security, Environmental and Health Risks under Kenneth Oye of MIT; and fundamental research modules on Ethics and Ontology under Paul Rabinow of the University of California at Berkeley.

Goals and Specific Aims

The overarching goal of Thrust IV is to examine synthetic biology within a frame of human practices, with reciprocal emphasis on ways that economic, political, and cultural forces may condition the development of synthetic biology and on ways that synthetic biology may significantly inform human security, health, and welfare. Our goal is to do this within innovative modes of collaboration between human sciences, ethics, and biological science.

APPLIED RESEARCH MODULES

The goals of the Applied Research Modules are to address practical concerns over security, environmental and health risks with attention to public perceptions and understandings of synthetic biology; and reconciling tensions between private intellectual property rights and the public commons to foster innovation in synthetic biology while facilitating diffusion of the fruits of innovation. Applied work on these areas of concern will be informed by research on fundamental problems in ethics and ontology.

FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH MODULES

The goal of the Fundamental Research Modules is to invent concepts and practices in a collaborative mode adequate to new problems and opportunities generated by new assemblages of laboratories, funders, policies, practices, and objectives represented by synthetic biology. The aim is to redirect and redefine understandings and forms of science and the general good in the 21st century. In order to do this we must evaluate contributions and limitations of existing models and suppositions concerning security, health, and welfare in relation to ethics, science, and ontology.

Critically, SynBERC thrusts (1-3), the two testbeds, and the Registry of Parts will be directly involved in forming, evaluating and, where appropriate, implementing work developed in thrust IV. We see these developments as an opportunity to invent new forms of collaborative practice. Standard approaches have sought to anticipate how new scientific developments will impact “society,” positioning themselves external to, and “downstream” of, the scientific work per se. By contrast, we are committed to an approach that fosters a co-production among disciplines and perspectives from the outset. The value of collaboration is that its goal is to build a synergistic and recursive structure within which significant challenges, problems, and achievements are more likely to be clearly formulated and successfully evaluated. Synthetic biology, and especially SynBERC, already represents a highly innovative assemblage of multiple scientific sub-disciplines, diverse forms of funding, complex institutional collaborations, serious forward-looking reflection, intensive work with governmental and non-governmental agencies, focused legal innovation, imaginative use of media, and the like. We begin with the assumption that from the outset, Thrust IV must be an integral, if distinctive, part of this overall effort. It is a principle goal of Thrust IV to invent and sustain this form of collaboration.

Fundamental Research Modules

ETHICS

Rethink the relationship of ethics and science in view of the highly innovative assemblage of objectives and practices in synthetic biology; analysis of the limitations and advantages of recent bio-ethics projects, including Belmont, Asilomar, ELSI, and Presidential Commissions; empirical research on evolving ethical practices in synthetic biology (including IP and security), monitoring differences in context and practical experience; design and develop collaborative ethical practices that reconfigure science and ethics for synthetic biology; stabilization and transfer of these collaborative practices.

ONTOLOGY

Reflect on the form andhttp://synberc.org/intranet/skins/common/images/button_image.png Embedded image essence of the parts, devices, chassis, and systems being created by synthetic biology; analyze the differences between the objects created in older recombinant technologies and those projected in synthetic biology; empirical research tracking how these parts, devices, chassis, systems, and test beds are designed and the ways that evolution and contemporary synthetic approaches differ from and enforce each other; observe and design new institutional arrangements and interventions appropriate to the new objects being brought into the world; stabilization and transfer of new modes of productively assembling scientific, technological, economic, cultural, ethical, and security components.

DOCUMENTS

Media:Response to Draft Governance Report.pdf

EVENTS

Paul Rabinow gave a plenary address at the German Sociological Association Meetings in Kassel, that discussed synthetic biology.

PR gave a paper at Johns Hopkins conference on "Concepts of Life" that discussed synthetic biology.