Team:UCL/Humans

Synthetic biology sparks the imagination in all of us. Being at the dawn of the 21st century, iGEM teams across the globe have been given the opportunity to be at the forefront of a technology that has the potential to change the way we all live. With this team's Goodbye Azo Dye Project, we have sought to address an underappreciated environmental issue for which synthetic biology can provide a possible solution. However, the technology we are using is claimed to be at odds with assertions that our scientific endeavours could be detrimental to our environmental security in the first place. Hence, this juxtaposition has prompted us to imagine what it all means and how we can think of ways to make sure our collective efforts are met with a sustainable outcome. Therefore, the social scientists of our team have engaged themselves in working out an analysis of these two environmental discourses. By looking at the UCL team in relation to the broader iGEM framework, they have mapped out the current tendencies in dealing with a late-modernity that is entrapped by ecological uncertainties. The results show what this means in terms of the governance of an emerging technology like synthetic biology.