Future Organisms Interview Collection (UK), 2022-2024

Motivation and aims for the study

Synthetic genomics is an emerging international research field that promises to bring new types of organism into the world, potentially challenging fundamental relationships between humans and other species. Future Organisms involved social scientific investigation of synthetic genomics across three countries that have invested significantly in the field: the UK, the USA and Japan. The main objectives were to:

1. Advance the theory and practice of responsible research and innovation (RRI) through a study of synthetic genomics
2. Explore the narratives and expectations driving national investments into synthetic genomics

3. Investigate the significance of the organism being engineered in synthetic genomics research projects

4. Create spaces that allow commitments in synthetic genomics to be reflected upon, debated and, where necessary, challenged

5. Build international capacity for social scientific engagement with synthetic genomics and other emerging fields

Key topics covered in this research included:

Synthetic genomics and the role of social scientific engagement

Recent developments in DNA synthesis technologies are making it possible for scientists to build long stretches of genetic material, including whole chromosomes and even complete genomes. These capacities are proliferating globally, along with financial support for large and ambitious genome construction projects. Decisions about what to build, however, are being made by a small group of scientists and engineers who are re-designing organisms in ways that could profoundly change how humans relate to other species. Currently there is little social scientific analysis or scrutiny of this work, despite its potential epistemic and social ramifications. Social scientific engagement helps to complete this gap. As a part of this, the project aimed to contribute to work on RRI by reflecting on and articulating roles that social sciences can play in synthetic genomics. This is a pressing issue since research funding initiatives around the world are drawing social scientists into closer proximity to STEM research, but often asymmetrically, positioning the social sciences as service providers

Multispecies approaches to responsibility

Synthetic genomics foregrounds the organism being engineered and so provides a compelling call to respond to these critiques by drawing multispecies studies into conversation with RRI. This project therefore explored how human ‘response-abilities’ (Haraway 2016) to other creatures are shaped in synthetic genomics. Together, we will attend to how creatures manifest in the field to ask how multispecies interdependencies could enrich RRI theory and practice.

Policy narratives and national agendas

The literature underpinning the concept of RRI emphasises the importance of political and economic forces in shaping the trajectories of science. However, much STS work conducted under the aegis of RRI involves an individual (often early career) social scientist being tasked to ‘deliver’ RRI for a single scientific research project, limiting the extent to which they can engage with large-scale international initiatives such as synthetic genomics. This project therefore offered an analysis of synthetic genomics across multiple sites and scales – from individuals and laboratories to national and international institutions – to interrogate the narratives and expectations at play.

Key findings:

Our study of the emergence of the field of synthetic genomics shows that it is defined in local ways, depending on context. Synthetic genomics has not yet formed a distinctive community, despite the expectations of many scientists involved in the ‘GP-write project’ at the start of our research. However, the ideas have travelled and have had impacts in contexts where national agendas are most attuned to them, often tying into efforts to drive the bioeconomy. We see a contrast between large, highly-capitalised laboratories, which draw on dominant metaphors of controlling living systems, and smaller laboratories, where we see different ways of thinking about engineering biology that extend beyond control. The desire for ethics/social science capacity exists in the field, but there are difficulties in realising this. These findings are the product of the entire project and do not derive solely from the interviews referred to in this data collection.