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What Does Synthetic Biology Have to Do with Biology?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Evelyn Fox Keller
Evelyn Fox Keller
Affiliation:
Program in Science, Technology and Society, Building E51 Room 171, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA E-mail: efkeller@mit.edu
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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.

Keywords

Artifical BiologyBiological EngineeringBiologyLifeSynthetic BiologyTechnoscience

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Type
Articles
Information
BioSocieties , Volume 4 , Issue 2-3 , September 2009 , pp. 291 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2009

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