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Introduction

Why an ethical endeavor in science, life science and specifically synthetic biology? (08/18)

The main aim of this first discussion was to introduce ethical questions in science from a broad point of view. We started with the following question: «Which conditions are we willing to accept in order to acquire a new knowledge? ». In other words - and in a “what acceptable means to our end” process - which one of these two fundamental posture do we consider prominent : our quest of knowledge, or the possible consequences of that knowledge - by his existence itself or in its applications?

We wondered about the tension between the obvious necessity of an ethical endeavor in science and the inherent slowing down it imposes on the research and innovation processes. That led us to discuss the principle of precaution, starting with the fact that it seems impossible to get the effect of a certain discovery without actually experimenting it. In this light, the precautionary principle appears as a limitation to the process of research - and even worst, something that may incite ourselves to inaction. All these questions and arguments were illustrated with concrete examples : treatment of nuclear waste, stem cells cases in France and in the US, psychology experiment with animals in the 50's and 60's...

Then, we thought about who have to take the ultimate decisions in science with respect to ethical issues. The position of the Paris' iGEM team was quite homogeneous : scientists must take decisions, because the ones who hold knowledge must be responsible for it. Such a regulatory role would be played by a scientific council - or anything which represent the scientific community. One of us evoked a more social and democratic approach : if every citizen is concerned by scientific productions, then everyone has to decide. Nevertheless, everybody admitted that nowadays it turns out that the legislators are those that finally take the decisions, even though they are not necessarily fully aware of what they do.

At the end of this first discussion, some proposal and analysis were expressed : Knowledge is amoral while the ethical problems relies on applications. what about a “note for good use” written by scientists?

As a brief conclusion, we can notice that - from the first question to the final point - all ethical questions, analysis and recommendations are specifically expressed by the team from a scientific standpoint. The main issue here deals with the will to gather knowledge and questions how acceptable fulfilling this will is. Such ideas would be very different between different communities. The ethical questions, deeply pragmatic, are included and performed in that “how to” concern, which then framed and stated as a “how to get and manage both knowledge and its application”.

Definition of Synthetic Biology by the team (08/19)

The challenge of this discussion was to confront the personal opinions of team individuals so as to come up with a collective definition of synthetic biology.

I submit that exercise to the team because the main concept underlying this new disciplinary approach of biology is defined in a variety of different way in the literature. The engineering method and the design of standardized parts generally stand as the main principles to build a definition of synthetic biology. Some authors contrast the bottom up and top down methods to manipulate life, others gets to design to characterize synthetic biology (as opposed to description or understanding that characterize “natural biology”). Utility, artificiality, function, component, living devices and systems, assembling and disassembling are the key concepts, methods and materials that are used by scientists, sociologists and others to construct their own definitions.

We round the table to estimate the degree of diversity of definition within the Paris 2009 team. The main idea was that of “providing new functions to existing organisms” and it was mostly expressed in the framework of utility. In their own words all was about “creating”, “re-creating”, “engineering”, “using”, “knowing and being able to divide” the living. Nevrtheless, the diversity of viewpoints apparent in the literature was also expressed by the team: Charlotte mentioned the process of “controlled evolution” (to give an organism some characteristics it wouldn't develop “naturally” through artificial selection). Guillaume, Vicard, Pierre and Christophe were concerned about the kind of new and defined function we can get from an organism - specifically about what degree of complexity could reasonably be attainable. Romain proposed a quite different approach by putting knowledge at the heart of synthetic biology. In this view, knowing every functions precisely and being able to divide and manipulating them comes as a prove of our understanding of biological processes.

We identified that the “evolutionary approach” mentioned above locates synthetic biology within a larger paradigm of life science. However, it reverse the usual trend by putting biological practices and goals as a new cause of change, a new way - a rational one - for the organism to gets new characteristic. Similarly to the agronomic perspective, the evolution of organisms in synthetic biology is now managed, decided and operated by human - and not only by the organisms' own contingent needs. Then, we discussed the perspective of “making an organism that do something we decide”. At least, we discuss about an inventory of biological knowledge is performed across molecular biology methods.This last perspective seems to be close to the “re-writing” process, seen as a performance of our knowledge and technologies about life science.

After covering our own definitions, I proposed various definitions that one can find in the literature in order to discuss them.

• Artificiality

The idea of synthetic biology as building “artificial life” is quite rejected by the team - or at least temperate. Members of the team reject the idea that, in the lab work, researchers could be in a "state of mind as to create artificial life”. They didn't recognize themselves in that “Frankenstein"'s attitude. The fact that life sciences - and particularly agronomy - is about creating something unnatural is globally admitted, and cannot be considered as a peculiarity of synthetic biology.

• Utility and implementation in natural systems

In the team's (collective) mind, the difference between “natural” and “synthetic” biology is caught between “understanding life” and “using this understanding to manipulate life”.

• Bio engineering : relations and differences with traditional engineering

That point led to the question : Are we able to put life into engineering process? This process is seen as both a question and a goal. The aim of engineering is to get to simplicity to make things works together and to be able to build faster, concepts that are embodied in the “specification process”. The basic concern of engineers is to get their designs to work. From this theoretical standpoint, traditional and bio-engineering are easily comparable. However, things are quite different in reality, and traditional engineering may rather be viewed an analogy or a metaphor which is hardly achievable for synthetic biology. The specification process is a fancy for biology, biological parts are not bolt or screw, and will never be. That is, all theoretical and material systems that frame a bolt (well controlled specs, independence with respect to other components) might be beyond reach for biological systems. The “bolt paradigm” is not working here. Why? Traditional engineering works by planning a whole system, you hardly can be surprised by the results because one controls everything in the specifications. This contrasts with synthetic biology, wherein the limits of understanding are often crossed, leading to surprising, unpredictable and uncontrollable behavior. Pierre proposed the idea of retro-engineering as more adapted to the biological endeavor thus far : researchers deconstruct living entities to small, understandable pieces and question it. Synthetic biology would then re-build entities with minor variations owing to that newly acquired knowledge. The main point common to both synthetic biology and retro-engineering is the way to question the object : how do it work? How could it work better? The main difference - and it's a big one - is the fact that living things are historical entities. They can be compared to a mechanism, but in reality it is an irrational mess evolved as it could to cope with changing needs. In this way, a living entity can be compared to a computer program patched for millions of year instead of completely re-forge its architecture.

This discussion was about defining synthetic biology. Usually, this kind of exercise relies on identifying links and differences between objects that are regarded as close from each other, in order to highlight their own particularities. This way, we tried to “locate” synthetic biology in a larger disciplinary field, to qualify it and to draw a system of reference. I noticed the diversity and heterogeneity of the references we discuss, which - from my point of view - underlies the interest of that discipline. Indeed, we went through various methods (bottom up/top down, design/understanding), concepts (utility, artificiality), goals (creating, re-creating, re-writing, standardizing) and paradigms (evolution, engineering). This large “landscape” shows the complexity and the stake of the exercise. To define oneself seems always both difficult and necessary. Referring to Evelyn Fox Keller's works, synthetic biology is trying to define itself and the outcome will be, as always, decisive for the development of the discipline.