Synthetic Biology in Situ

Abstract

1. Quotation from an interview with a project participant.

Andy Balmer: You say you’re working on a synthetic biology project. Why do you call it that?

Academic Molecular Biologist 1: Why do I call it that? Partly because that is where the idea [for my work] came from. The network I got involved with was badged as a synthetic biology network and the idea came out of that. But it may have equally come out of a network that wasn’t badged as synthetic biology. It would have just been called biotechnology or something in the past. Would we have called it synthetic biology five years ago? Probably not. We would have just said it was a kind of microbial biotechnology approach or something.

There is nothing more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes. (Machiavelli, 1961: 21)