Team:UCL/Humans/Soci/1

Facing Duality in Synthetic Biology

Biology is said to bring the greatest innovation in the twenty-first century. With the promise of synthetic biology to design and build biological systems, this innovation appears to not only change science and technology, but even have considerable transformational potential for societies that continue to seek progress. A high-level expert group on new and emerging science and technology within the European Commission specified a total of six domains where biotechnology as a discipline could be strongly affected due to the emergence of synthetic biology: 'biomedicine, synthesis of biopharmaceuticals, sustainable chemical industry, environment and energy, and the production of smart materials and biomaterials and counter-bioterrorism measures' (Calvert 2010; European Commission and Directorate General for Research 2005: 13-17; Kelle 2013, 2012). And as these processes of innovation expand, synthetic biology becomes functional in creating highly beneficial applications to society. However, as with many emerging technologies, synthetic biology has the potential to cognate with issues of misuse and risk. Considering that in synthetic biology principles of engineering are brought to biology, safety and security thus come to the fore as relevant topics in designing an appropriate governance structure for emerging technologies (Kelle 2012).

Resulting from this duality between beneficial innovation and harmful outcome surrounding synthetic biology, is therefore a socially constructed dilemma that such a dual-use technology seems to imply (Tucker 2011). This dilemma thus pertains to practices and discourses conveying this dual nature through portrayals that can be both negative and positive depending on the social dispositions held by members of society. Moreover, the dual-use nature of synthetic biology becomes even more salient in instances when its use is set against an environmental backdrop where the technology is perceived as a strategic tool in bioremediation efforts and the development of biofuels, while the inherent characteristics of synthetic biology can cause major concern in terms of the ecological calamities it can induce. Hence, there is a discursive discrepancy that can become rather acute when its technological implications are concerned in relation to the environment (Dryzek 2005, Purnick and Weiss 2009).

It is therefore interesting to take a closer look at how diverging narratives on technology and environment can occur within one iGEM team working on an environmental solution. As part of the competition's Environment Track, the Goodbye AzoDye Project of UCL iGEM 2014 can from that perspective be instrumental in getting a better understanding of the dynamic tension between tackling the problem of textile dyeing process wastewater disposal, and the potential ecological hazards from the technology they are using to solve this problem. However, unlike genetic engineering and the production of genetically modified crops, synthetic biology has not yet been challenged by a widespread public controversy surrounding its scientific practices, mostly due to the general unfamiliarity of the discipline among the wider lay public. As a result, the iGEM competition provides an experimental opportunity to see how opposing discourses develop both internally and externally as teams look at various aspects related to their summer project (Pauwels 2013; Torgersen and Hampel 2012; Tucker 2011).

Anticipatory Socialisation for Sustainable Governance in iGEM

Considering that the iGEM competition urges students of synthetic biology to be comprehensive in the way they deal with in their own technology and their project as a whole, the assumption can be made that the competition and the iGEM framework in general, fosters a context of social learning for students. This implies that the competition can be seen as a form of education for responsible innovation that, in turn, demonstrates some of the qualities that are required to make the governance of synthetic biology viable in terms of managing sustainable innovation. The way the competition is organised shows that within a team and within the context of the competition, spaces are created for the students to think about what they are doing, how it affects society and how they can respond to issues of safety and security while being part of society. Moreover, the competitive elements of iGEM gives students the necessary incentive to practice synthetic biology as a profession to which they can aspire to. The anticipation of fulfilling this objective, as portrayed by the iGEM, shapes the student's expectations of what it means to be a synthetic biologist (Pauwels 2011; Zhang 2013).

Therefore, the competition not only prompts students to reflect on their own scientific efforts and how science is practiced in general, the projects also encourages efforts that can benefit appropriate policy-making and governance for emerging dual-use technologies. In the case of UCL iGEM 2014, the governance implications also pertain to sustainability in response to environmental decline that has already occurred. Coming up with a solution that can subvert ecological controversy also requires an understanding of environmental governance in addition to dealing with the nature of emerging technologies. As such, the Goodbye AzoDye Project can thus act as a clear example of how a politics of environmental knowledge can be highly ambiguous in its discursive practice when confronted with the uncertainty that dual-use technologies bring (Kelle 2013; Lentzos 2012; National Research Council (U.S.) et al. 2009).