ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 examines synthetic biology as the most influential extension of the idea and norms of ‘Open Source’ to the life sciences. The suggestion is that access and openness are needed to encourage collaboration, the sharing of knowledge, and further development of platform technologies. Yet this alternative mirrors a normative space situated at the intersection of informatics and the commodification of life. Digital platforms and genetic techniques underdevelopment are closely related to business models applied for delivering whatever synthetic compound might be in demand on the world market – plastics, chemicals, oil, and so forth. After discussing what openness means in its relation to the design community associated with the BioBricks Foundation (BBF), the chapter turns to re-imagining what a rigorous application of Open Source principles to genetic engineering might look like. To that end, we compare the ‘minimal-genome’ and ‘minimal-cell’ projects. Their differences enable us to go beyond rhetoric and into the underlying scientific practises to re-imagine whether an Open Source approach has potential to offer an alternative that extends beyond the desire to solve global problems through genetic engineering imbued with conventional ideas of property, ownership, and access to markets and resources.
