The emphasis of systems and synthetic biology on quantitative understanding of biological objects and their eventual re-design has raised the question of whether description and construction standards that are commonplace in electric and mechanical engineering are applicable to live systems. The tuning of genetic devices to deliver a given activity is generally context-dependent, thereby undermining the re-usability of parts, and predictability of function, necessary for manufacturing new biological objects. Tolerance and allowance are key aspects of standardization that need to be (...) brought to biological design. These should endow functional building blocks with a pre-specified level of confidence for bespoke biosystems engineering. However, in the absence of more fundamental knowledge, fine-tuning necessarily relies on evolutionary/combinatorial gravitation toward a fixed objective. (shrink)

Historical analyses of what metabolism has been conceived of, how concepts of metabolism were related to disciplines such as nineteenth-century nutritional physiology or twentieth-century biochemistry, and how their genealogies relate to the current developments may be helpful to understand the various, at times polemic, ways in which the boundaries between metabolism and heredity have been re-drawn. Against this background, a small number of scholars gathered in Berlin for a workshop that equally aimed at bringing new stories to the fore, and (...) at considering seemingly known ones in a new light. Some aspects of the discussions are summarized in this paper. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is not only a contemporary reformulation of the recombinant DNA technologies of the last 30 years, combined with descriptive language imported from electrical and industrial engineering. It is also a new way to interpret living systems and a statement of intent for the use and reprogramming of biological objects for human benefit. In this context, the notion of designer biology is often presented as opposed to natural selection following the powerful rationale formulated by François Jacob on evolution-as-tinkering. The (...) onset of synthetic biology opens a different perspective by leaving aside the question about the evolutionary origin of biological phenomena and focusing instead on the relational logic and the material properties of the corresponding components that make biological system work as they do. Once a functional challenge arises, the solution space for the problem is not homogeneous but it has attractors that can be accessed either through random exploration or rational design. Although these two paths are essentially different, they can lead to solutions to specific mechanistic bottlenecks that frequently coincide or converge—and one can easily help to understand and improve the other. Alas, productive discussions on these matters are often contaminated by ideological preconceptions that prevent adoption of the engineering metaphor to understand and ultimately reshape living systems—as ambitioned by synthetic biology. Yet, some possible ways to overcome the impasse are feasible. In parallel to Monod’s evolutionary paradox of teleo-logy vs. teleo-nomy, a mechanistic paradox could be entertained between techno-logy vs techno-nomy, all for the sake of understanding the relational logic that enables live systems to function as physico-chemical entities in time and space. This article thus proposes a radical vision of synthetic biology through the lens of the engineering metaphor. (shrink)