Living machines go wild policing the imaginative horizons of synthetic biology
Kirksey E.
Every year thousands of young people exhibit designs for genetically modified organisms at the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in Boston. Regarding living creatures as “machines” is nothing new. Even still, life is being remade in novel and surprising ways as iGEM students use increasingly fast and cheap genetic engineering tools. Designs for living machines that seek to optimize biology are ironically generating new kinds of wildness where a loss of control presents unknown risks and new dangers. Human health and the well-being of other species is at stake. Following students from iGEM to their home universities—in Sydney, London, and Abu Dhabi—I studied the interplay of utopian dreams and nightmare scenarios. Some iGEM participants hope to alter the human condition with new kinds of symbiotic bacteria. Other competitors seek to repair fragile multispecies worlds where endangered species and structurally marginalized people are in precarious situations. Power is functioning predictably at iGEM. FBI agents are promoting government and corporate interests as they police narrowly defined risks. Gatekeepers to capital are translating the entrepreneurial potential of student projects into profit. The imagination has become a battlefield as students with alternative priorities, values, interests, and ethical commitments struggle to find support.