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15 Macquarie L.J. 27 (2015)
The Synthetic Yeast Project as a Topic for Social Scientific Investigation

handle is hein.journals/macq15 and id is 37 raw text is: THE SYNTHETIC YEAST PROJECT AS A TOPIC FOR SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION JANE CALVERT* AND EMMA FROW** The synthetic yeast project (Sc2.0) is a visible example of the recent rise in prominence of eukaryotic synthetic biology. Drawing on an analysis of news stories, scientific papers, and our involvement with the scientific community, we describe the synthetic yeast project and some of its precursors, and we identify the technical, social and conceptual issues that we find particularly salient as researchers in Science and Technology Studies. We discuss the 'design principles'that are central to the project, and how these align Sc2.0 with the mainstream engineering agenda in synthetic biology. We identify the project's preference for openness regarding intellectual property, and compare this to ownership approaches in other branches of synthetic biology. We also argue that a study of yeast encourages us to consider more explicitly the spatial and temporal dimensions of the organisms used in synthetic biology. We conclude that social scientific investigation into the synthetic yeast project raises important questions that will help us better understand the movement of synthetic biology into more complex organisms and systems, and assist us in further exploring the tensions between engineering and biology that are central to this emerging field. I INTRODUCTION Yeast is a familiar microorganism. It is central to the production of everyday foods like bread and beer, and it is scientifically well understood. The familiarity of yeast makes the decision to build a synthetic 'designer' version of the entire yeast genome all the more significant. The goal of the synthetic yeast project (known as Sc2.0) is to create a novel, rationalised version of the genome of the yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae ('S. cerevisiae').In March 2014, the complete synthesis of one of the chromosomes of S. cerevisiae was announced,2 and received widespread scientific and media coverage. In this commentary we discuss the Sc2.0 project, paying attention to those features of the project, and of the synthetic organism, that we find particularly distinctive or noteworthy. * BSc (Sussex), MSc (London), DPhil (Sussex), Reader in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh. BA MA PhD (Cantab) MSc (Edinburgh), Assistant Professor, School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, and Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Arizona State University. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on this article. Jane Calvert would like to thank Sonia Allen and Wendy Rogers for an invitation to attend a workshop on the Ethics and Governance of Synthetic Biology at Macquarie University in December 2014 where preliminary ideas for this paper were developed. This research was made possible by funding from the European Research Council (6165 10-ENLIFE), and the UK's Biological and Biotechnological Sciences Research Council (ERASynBio- IESY). 1 The National Science Foundation, Synthetic Yeast 2.0, Building the world's first synthetic eukaryotic genome together (2015) Synthetic Yeast 2.0 <http://syntheticyeast.org/>. 2 Narayana Annaluru et al, 'otal synthesis of a functional designer eukaryotic chromosome' (2014) 344(6179) Science 55.

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