The Conception of Life in Synthetic Biology

Science and Engineering Ethics

Volumn 18, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 757-774

  Deplazes Zemp, Anna ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH   (Switzerland)

Author keywords

Biotechnology; Conception of life; Designing life; Living machine; Synthetic biology

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOTECHNOLOGY; COMPREHENSION; CONCEPT FORMATION; ETHICS; LIFE; LITERATURE; SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY;

BIOTECHNOLOGY; COMPREHENSION; CONCEPT FORMATION; LIFE; METAPHOR; SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY;

EID: 84870747474     PISSN: 13533452     EISSN: 16605454     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s11948-011-9269-z     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Andrianantoandro, E., Basu, S., Karig, D. K., & Weiss, R. (2006). Synthetic biology: new engineering rules for an emerging discipline. Molecular Systems Biology, 2, 1-14. doi: 10. 1038/msb4100073.
2. Anonymous (2006). Life 2. 0. The Economist, August, 67-69.
3. Attfield, R. (1998). Intrinsic value and transgenic animals. In A. Holland & A. Johnson (Eds.), Animal biotechnology and ethics (pp. 172-189). London: Chapman & Hall.
4. Baker, D., Church, G., Collins, J., Endy, D., Jacobson, J., Keasling, J., et al. (2006). Engineering life: Building a FAB for biology (pp. 44-51). USA: Scientific American.
5. Benner, S. A. (2004). Understanding nucleic acids using synthetic chemistry. Accounts of Chemical Research, 37(10), 784-797. doi: 10. 1021/ar040004z.
6. Benner, S. A., & Sismour, A. M. (2005). Synthetic biology. Nature Reviews Genetics, 6(7), 533-543. doi: 10. 1038/nrg1637.
7. Bergstrom, D. E. (2009). Unnatural nucleosides with unusual base pairing properties. Curr Protoc Nucleic Acid Chem, Chapter 1, Unit 1 4, doi: 10. 1002/0471142700. nc0104s37.
8. Bitbol, M., & Luisi, P. L. (2004). Autopoiesis with or without cognition: defining life at its edge. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 1(1), 99-107. doi: 10. 1098/rsif. 2004. 0012.
9. Boldt, J., & Muller, O. (2008). Newtons of the leaves of grass. Nature Biotechnology, 26(4), 387-389. doi: 10. 1038/nbt0408-387.
10. Boldt, J., Müller, O., & Maio, G. (2009). Synthetische Biologie Eine ethisch-philosophische Analyse. Bern: BBL (Bundesamt für Bauten und Logistik).
11. Carr, P. A., & Church, G. M. (2009). Genome engineering. Nature Biotechnology, 27(12), 1151-1162. doi: 10. 1038/nbt. 1590.
12. Cho, M. K., Magnus, D., Caplan, A. L., & McGee, D. (1999). Policy forum: genetics. Ethical considerations in synthesizing a minimal genome. Science, 286(5447), 2087, 2089-2090.
13. Deamer, D. (2010). Special collection of essays: What is life? Introduction. Astrobiology, 10(10), 1001-1002. doi: 10. 1089/ast. 2010. 0569.
14. Deplazes, A. (2009). Piecing together a puzzle. An exposition of synthetic biology. EMBO Reports, 10(5), 428-432. doi: 10. 1038/embor. 2009. 76.
15. Deplazes, A., & Huppenbauer, M. (2009). Synthetic organisms and living machines: Positioning the products of synthetic biology at the borderline between living and non-living matter. Systems and Synthetic Biology, 3(1-4), 55-63. doi: 10. 1007/s11693-009-9029-4.
16. Descartes, R. (1985-1988). Discourse on the method. In Cottingham J., Soothoff R., & Murdoch D. (Eds.), The philosophical writings of descartes 3 vol (Vol. 1, pp. 109-177). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
17. Dougherty, M. J., & Arnold, F. H. (2009). Directed evolution: New parts and optimized function. Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 20(4), 486-491. doi: 10. 1016/j. copbio. 2009. 08. 005.
18. Drubin, D. A., Way, J. C., & Silver, P. A. (2007). Designing biological systems. Genes and Development, 21(3), 242-254. doi: 10. 1101/gad. 1507207.
19. Endy, D. (2005). Foundations for engineering biology. Nature, 438(7067), 449-453. doi: 10. 1038/nature04342.
20. Ganti, T. (2003). The principles of life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
21. Glass, J. I., Assad-Garcia, N., Alperovich, N., Yooseph, S., Lewis, M. R., Maruf, M., et al. (2006). Essential genes of a minimal bacterium. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 103(2), 425-430. doi: 10. 1073/pnas. 0510013103.
22. Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology and other essays (W. Lovitt, Trans.). New York: Harper Torchbooks.
23. Heinemann, M., & Panke, S. (2006). Synthetic biology-putting engineering into biology. Bioinformatics, 22(22), 2790-2799. doi: 10. 1093/bioinformatics/btl469.
24. Hold, C., & Panke, S. (2009). Towards the engineering of in vitro systems. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 6, 507-521. doi: 10. 1098/rsif. 2009. 0110. focus.
25. Holt, R. A. (2008). Synthetic genomes brought closer to life. Nature Biotechnology, 26(3), 296-297. doi: 10. 1038/nbt0308-296.
26. Hursthouse, R. (2007). Virtue Ethics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University, http://plato. stanford. edu/entries/ethics-virtue/.
27. iGEM (2007). About iGEM. http://parts. mit. edu/wiki/index. php/About_iGEM.
28. Jonas, H. (1985). The imperative of responsibility in search of an ethics for the technological age. Chicago (Ill.): The University of Chicago Press.
29. Koshland, D. E., Jr. (2002). Special essay. The seven pillars of life. Science, 295(5563), 2215-2216. doi: 10. 1126/science. 1068489.
30. Kull, K., Deacon, T., Emmeche, C., Hoffmeyer, J., & Frederik, S. (2009). Theses on biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a theoretical biology. Biological Theory, 4(2), 167-173.
31. La Mettrie, J. O. (1996). Machine man. In A. Thomsom (Ed.), Machine man and other writings (pp. 1-41). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32. Luisi, P. L. (2002). Toward the engineering of minimal living cells. Anatomical Record, 268(3), 208-214. doi: 10. 1002/ar. 10155.
33. Luisi, P. L. (2003). Autopoiesis: A review and a reappraisal. Naturwissenschaften, 90(2), 49-59. doi: 10. 1007/s00114-002-0389-9.
34. Luisi, P. L. (2006). The emergence of life, from chemical origins to synthetic biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
35. Martin, C. H., Nielsen, D. R., Solomon, K. V., & Prather, K. L. (2009). Synthetic metabolism: Engineering biology at the protein and pathway scales. Chemistry and Biology, 16(3), 277-286. doi: 10. 1016/j. chembiol. 2009. 01. 010.
36. Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
37. Mayr, E. (1997). This is biology: The science of the living world. Cambridge: Harward University Press.
38. Morange, M. (2009). A new revolution? The place of systems biology and synthetic biology in the history of biology. EMBO Reports, 10(Suppl 1), S50-S53. doi: 10. 1038/embor. 2009. 156.
39. Moya, A., Krasnogor, N., Pereto, J., & Latorre, A. (2009). Goethe's dream. Challenges and opportunities for synthetic biology. EMBO Reports, 10, 28-32. doi: 10. 1038/embor. 2009. 120.
40. Neumann, H., Wang, K., Davis, L., Garcia-Alai, M., & Chin, J. W. (2010). Encoding multiple unnatural amino acids via evolution of a quadruplet-decoding ribosome. Nature, 464(7287), 441-444. doi: 10. 1038/nature08817.
41. O'Malley, M. A., Powell, A., Davies, J. F., & Calvert, J. (2008). Knowledge-making distinctions in synthetic biology. Bioessays, 30(1), 57-65. doi: 10. 1002/bies. 20664.
42. Purnick, P. E., & Weiss, R. (2009). The second wave of synthetic biology: from modules to systems. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 10(6), 410-422. doi: 10. 1038/nrm2698.
43. Riskin, J. (2003). The defecating duck, or, the ambiguous origins of artificial life. Critical Inquiry, 29(4), 599-633.
44. Schmidt, M. (2010). Xenobiology: A new form of life as the ultimate biosafety tool. Bioessays, 32(4), 322-331. doi: 10. 1002/bies. 200900147.
45. Schulze-Makuch, D., & Irwin, L. N. (2006). The prospect of alien life in exotic forms on other worlds. Naturwissenschaften, 93(4), 155-172. doi: 10. 1007/s00114-005-0078-6.
46. Simpson, M. L. (2006). Cell-free synthetic biology: A bottom-up approach to discovery by design. Molecular Systems Biology, 2, 69. doi: 10. 1038/msb4100104.
47. Stano, P., & Luisi, P. L. (2010). Achievements and open questions in the self-reproduction of vesicles and synthetic minimal cells. Chemical Communications (Camb), 46(21), 3639-3653. doi: 10. 1039/b913997d.
48. Szathmary, E. (2003). Why are there four letters in the genetic alphabet? Nature Reviews Genetics, 4(12), 995-1001. doi: 10. 1038/nrg1231.
49. Taylor, P. W. (1986). Respect for nature a theory of environmental ethics. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.
50. Vriend, H. d. (2006). Constructing life early social reflections on the emerging field of synthetic biology. De Hague, Netherlands: Rathenau Institute.
51. Wang, L., Xie, J., & Schultz, P. G. (2006). Expanding the genetic code. Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure, 35, 225-249. doi: 10. 1146/annurev. biophys. 35. 101105. 121507.
52. Wimmer, E., Mueller, S., Tumpey, T. M., & Taubenberger, J. K. (2009). Synthetic viruses: a new opportunity to understand and prevent viral disease. Nature Biotechnology, 27(12), 1163-1172. doi: 10. 1038/nbt. 1593.