My word!

Priya Kurian & Debashish Munshi

“Communication lies at the heart of public understanding of science,” we said in our last blog. But sometimes this communication manifests itself in the form of buzzwords that attempt to capture the public’s imagination on new and emerging technologies.

The politics of buzzwords, as indeed the economics of buzzwords, are the focus of a thought-provoking article by Bernadette Bensaude Vincent in the latest issue of Public Understanding ofScience. What purpose do “fashionable stereotyped phrases such as ‘public engagement in science’, ‘responsible innovation’, ‘green technology’, or ‘personalised medicine’” serve in discussions on science and technology, Vincent asks.

Buzzwords, according to Vincent, go beyond the merely scientific issues around a technology; they create a linguistic laboratory where an alchemic understanding is created that almost magically blends science with politics, business and economics.  In the process, they serve to smoothen out controversies, contradictions and challenges, acting as “pacifiers” that subvert the possibilities for change by overcoming dissent and avoiding “clashes of values.” Such words don’t have philological roots nor do they convey any depth of meaning. But they serve a pragmatic purpose in creating what Vincent calls a “‘trading zone’ that allows different stakeholders to communicate.”

Pragmatic is an operative word here. Words are not neutral units of language. They are political domains that are contested. Let’s take the example of the term ‘genetic engineering’ which has evoked polarised reactions from those who are for it and those that are against. Given the massive protests against genetic engineering of food in different parts of the world, this term has slowly gone behind the shadows although research and practice of this technology continues as ever before. Instead, we hear more of the term ‘synthetic biology’ which is not as politically loaded as ‘genetic engineering’ is.

But is ‘synthetic biology’ much different from ‘genetic engineering’? In linguistic terms, they are pretty close but the connotations are nowhere near as similar. People don’t know as much about synthetic biology and, as a result, research in the field is much less controversial.

Talking of synthetic biology, the BBCreported this week the “creation of the first synthetic chromosome for yeast in a landmark for biological engineering.” The BBC quoted the research team leader, Dr Jef Boeke of the Langone Medical Centre at New York University, as describing the achievement as "moving the needle in synthetic biology from theory to reality."

This, according to an article in the Independent, is a “milestone development in synthetic biology, which promises to revolutionise medical and industrial biotechnology in the coming century.” 

Note the bracketing of medical and industrial – science, medicine, business, and industry are no longer separate domains. Buzzwords work in making this nexus easier.

Synthetic Biology

At first glance, the term sounds like an oxymoron. Synthetic implies something not quite natural while biology, as the science of living things, lies at the core of nature. Yet synthetic biology has joined the list of new and emerging technologies that is engaging scientists and social scientists alike. As with many other new technologies, the public has little understanding of what this radical new field of study is all about.

The current issue of Public Understanding of Science takes a major step in facilitating this understanding. Synthetic biology is quite simply breaking boundaries as it involves creating artificial biological systems but even scientists do not agree on what it specifically entails. In her introductory piece, Nicole Kronberger, cites an expert as saying: “If you ask five people to define synthetic biology, you will get six answers.”

According to Kronberger, the term synthetic biology itself is a hundred years old, having been coined by the French chemist Stéphane Leduc in 1912 but it is very recently that it has started shaping up to be a whole new field of academic study. 

Kronberger’s introduction provides a good overview of the four articles and a commentary on synthetic biology featured in the special issue. One of the key questions, from a public understanding point of view, is how similar and how different is synthetic biology from earlier technologies such as genetic modification. Although the potential for generating debates is high, Helge Torgersen and Jürgen Hampel say in their article that analogies cannot be made between synthetic biology and GM. Among the significant differences between them is the fact that synthetic biology does not involve tangible products such as food. Hence, they argue that synthetic biology is much less likely to be controversial.

Kronberger, however, acknowledges that “the synthetic biology community is aware that its research has the potential to be controversial.”

In a recent issue of Nature, published earlier this month, Genya V. Dana, Todd Kuiken, David Rejeski and Allison A. Snow raise questions about the potential risks of synthetic living organisms: “Unlike transgenic crops, synthetic microbes will be altered in more sophisticated and fundamental ways (such as elimination of metabolic pathways), making them potentially more difficult to regulate, manage and monitor. They might also have environmental impacts that are difficult to predict.” In their commentary, the authors suggest four areas of risk research to deal with this potential threat. These include looking “for changes in a synthetic organism's production of toxic substances or other harmful metabolites;” considering “how such microbes might alter habitats, food webs or biodiversity;” finding the “the rate at which the synthetic organism and its genetic material evolves so as to determine whether the organism could persist, spread or alter its behaviour in natural environments;”  and determining whether such organisms can “pass on properties such as antibiotic resistance, which could pose threats to human health.”

Reflecting on the current research on synthetic biology, Matthias Kaiser raises some fundamental questions on the anxiety over potential value conflicts anticipated in the area of new technologies. In his commentary in the current issue of the Public Understanding of Science, he asks what the purpose of public engagement on new technologies such as synthetic biology is, whose interests are served by such engagements, and whether we need new frameworks to facilitate public engagement.

There’s surely more to come on this topic ….