Experimental studied on growing chemical organisms (original) (raw)
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Architectural Design, 2006
Biology is the science of life. It concerns itself with the living. The long-proclaimed biological paradigm for architectural design must for this reason go beyond using shallow biological metaphors or a superficial biomorphic formal repertoire. The consequence is a literal understanding of the design product as a synthetic life-form embedded within dynamic and generative ecological relations. Michael Hensel examines the repercussions of this proposition and surveys current developments in biology and biochemistry with respect to synthetic-life research, gathering insights into their potential application in architectural design.
The engineering-based approach of synthetic biology is characterized by an assumption that 'engineering by design' enables the construction of 'living machines'. These 'machines', as biological machines, are expected to display certain properties of life, such as adapting to changing environments and acting in a situated way. This paper proposes that a tension exists between the expectations placed on biological artefacts and the notion of producing such systems by means of engineering; this tension makes it seem implausible that biological systems, especially those with properties characteristic of living beings, can in fact be produced using the specific methods of engineering. We do not claim that engineering techniques have nothing to contribute to the biotechnological construction of biological artefacts. However, drawing on Descartes's and Kant's thinking on the relationship between the organism and the machine, we show that it is considerably more plausible to assume that distinctively biological artefacts emerge within a paradigm different from the paradigm of the Cartesian machine that underlies the engineering approach. We close by calling for increased attention to be paid to approaches within molecular biology and chemistry that rest on conceptions different from those of synthetic biology's engineering paradigm.
Basic science through engineering? Synthetic modeling and the idea of biology-inspired engineering
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2013
Synthetic biology is often understood in terms of the pursuit for well-characterized biological parts to create synthetic wholes. Accordingly, it has typically been conceived of as an engineering dominated and application oriented field. We argue that the relationship of synthetic biology to engineering is far more nuanced than that and involves a sophisticated epistemic dimension, as shown by the recent practice of synthetic modeling. Synthetic models are engineered genetic networks that are implanted in a natural cell environment. Their construction is typically combined with experiments on model organisms as well as mathematical modeling and simulation. What is especially interesting about this combinational modeling practice is that, apart from greater integration between these different epistemic activities, it has also led to the questioning of some central assumptions and notions on which synthetic biology is based. As a result synthetic biology is in the process of becoming more "biology inspired."
Multiscale Synthetic Biology: From Molecules to Ecosystems (pag. 97)
The dream of a manmade living creature dates back to the dawn of civilization [1]: the Jewish legend of Golem and the late‐romantic Mary Shelley’s character of Frankenstein’s Monster are just two of the most famous archetypes of synthetic (human) biology. The passage from myth and metaphor to science and technology has been continuous and, since the eighteenth century mechanic automata up until today, the basic view of synthetic biology research has basically been the same [2]. The emphasis shifted from the eighteenth‐century “organism as a clockwork” metaphor to the nineteenth‐century organism as a “thermal machine,” ending up with the organism as a “computer” of the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries (with a more marked emphasis on network systems in these days with respect to the logical flux of information of the second half of the previous century). Notwithstanding that, both the fiction and technological ideas edounded about the idea of the existence of a “basic mechanism of life” that, albeit complex, could, be replicated in a laboratory (at least in principle). Thus, it is not without interest to have a closer look at the concept of synthesis. Not all the projects of artificial life are properly “synthetic.” We do not use the word synthesis (characterized by the Greek prefix “syn” pointing to the emergence of new features by the organic fusion of different elements) for cars or computer programs. On the other hand, we currently speak of organic synthesis, referring to the production of new organic molecules not present in nature and “synthesizer” is the name given machines devoted to the fusion of different sounds in electronic musical composition.
Life by design: Philosophical perspectives on synthetic biology
BIO Web of Conferences, 2015
Biology is Technology", this title of a book authored by bioengineer Rob Carlson captures the essence of synthetic biology. This novel research field is in the hands of engineers, who are in charge of redesigning life or designing new forms of life for specific purposes. In the aftermath of "the century of the gene" (Evelyn Fox Keller, Cambridge Mass, Harvard University Press, 2002) he comes the century of "life by design". As the emergence of molecular biology allowed reading the code of life, it seems quite natural to rewrite it with the alphabet. "From reading to writing the genetic code", this is how Craig Venter, a genetic engineer who designed the first bacteria with a synthetic genome in 2010, explains and legitimizes his research programme. It seems to be a logical inference based on a chronological sequence. The prospect of designing organisms triggers the promise of manufacture of all sorts of organisms to meet societal demands or human desires and fantasies: From bacteria-workers to the creation of new forms of life or even.. . immortal life. Just as in nanotechnology, synthetic biology develops an "economy of promises". However synthetic biology seems to go one step further. While nanotechnology has been advertised with the slogan "shaping the world atom by atom" in the 2000 US National NanoInitiative, synthetic biology opens up the more challenging perspective of designing organisms that will remake the world for us. Re-engineered yeasts or bacteria will serve as pharmaceutical plants producing drugs. Synthetic algae will provide renewable fuel for our daily consumption of energy. Synthetic bacteria will decontaminate the soils polluted by chemicals and nuclear waste. This paper outlines a number of distinctive features of this emerging field in the constellation of bionanotechnologies. It then insists on the variety of research agendas and strategies gathered under the umbrella "synthetic biology". While redesigning life is the central goal, synthetic biologists do not develop a uniform view of living organisms.