Why is fermentation so absent from public discourse about synthetic biology? A dive into news coverage of the Venter synthetic cell announcement reveals that 'creation of artificial life' dominated at the expense of more mundane but more accurate descriptions rooted in fermentation.
How to use this guide. Posts are grouped by theme rather than chronology, drawing on work published between 2014 and 2023. Each post stands alone, but readers interested in the language and metaphor thread are encouraged to start with Section 2 and follow it through. Metaphor is never far away in any of these posts.
Section One
History and Origins of Synthetic Biology
Before CRISPR and gene drive, there was fermentation. These posts situate synthetic biology in a longer history, from the language of biotechnology's earliest days to the public excitement around Craig Venter's synthetic cell in 2010.
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Aug 2014
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Dec 2016Tracing the conceptual and historical roots of synthetic biology, from early speculations about creating life to the engineering metaphors that now dominate the field's self-presentation.
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Dec 2014Following the XNA story from a Nature article through press releases to mainstream coverage and asking how the language changes at each step. A case study in the 'rhetorical life of scientific facts'.
Section Two
Synthetic Biology, Metaphors and Responsible Language Use
The core thread: a sustained investigation into the metaphors (books, circuits, codes, machines, scissors, blueprints) through which synthetic biology and genome science are made intelligible to scientists, journalists and the public, and an argument for taking those metaphors seriously as an ethical matter.
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Feb 2016A survey of books and chapters on synthetic biology and metaphor, especially from Germany, establishing that synbio ethics is a growing area of scholarly concern and outlining the case for responsible language use as part of responsible innovation.
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Nov 2015A history of the 'book of life' metaphor from the 1960s to the present, tracking how 'reading' the genome gave way to 'writing' (synthetic biology) and then 'editing' (CRISPR). The post also asks what is lost when we take the metaphor too literally.
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Jan 2016Two master metaphors, the 'book of life' and the 'circuit of life', are examined side by side. Engineering metaphors dominate synthetic biology; text metaphors dominate genomics. What are the consequences of these framings for how we understand life?
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Feb 2016Military and precision metaphors (bullets, cannons, scissors, scalpels) dominate both nanomedicine and genomic medicine. This post asks what such language hides: namely, the irreducible messiness of biological systems.
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Apr 2016When MIT announced a programming language for bacteria in 2016, the press release used the word 'literally'. This post unpacks the compiling metaphor and asks what it means for public understanding when the explanatory language is itself opaque.
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Dec 2018A more programmatic statement of the case for responsible language use, bringing together threads from genomics, synthetic biology and gene editing to argue that metaphor awareness should be integral to responsible research and innovation.
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Jun 2018On the iGEM competition and the Lego/brick metaphors that have shaped synthetic biology's self-image since the beginning, asking what building-block language implies for how the public imagines (and fears) the redesign of life.
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Nov 2018What does it mean to create a 'minimal cell' and what does the word 'minimal' do in that phrase? A close reading of the language around a landmark piece of synthetic biology research.
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Oct 2020Returning to the 'minimal genome' concept and to the assumptions embedded in the word 'minimal'. How language shapes what scientists expect to find, and what the public is invited to imagine.
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Jan 2020On xenobots, the first 'living robots' made from frog cells, and the curious mix of machine and organism metaphors they attracted. An example of metaphors preceding and shaping understanding of a genuinely new kind of entity.
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Jul 2020The emergence of 'gene writing' as a new term alongside 'gene editing' and 'gene reading'. What does the writing metaphor imply about agency, creativity and our relationship to the genome?
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Jul 2015The #crisprfacts Twitter hashtag as a case study in how anti-hype can become its own form of hype; a reminder that metaphor and language awareness shouldn't be fun-free zones.
Section Three
Gene Editing and CRISPR: Language and Communication
CRISPR arrived with a vocabulary already formed (scissors, editing, cut-and-paste, designer babies) and that vocabulary has shaped the ethical debate ever since. These posts trace the metaphors from their origins to their consequences.
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Dec 2015Written during the first International Summit on Human Gene Editing, this post surveys CRISPR metaphors in both American and UK press coverage (scissors, blueprints, origami, targeting) and makes an early case for retiring the 'designer babies' framing.
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Mar 2015Placing the CRISPR moratorium debate in historical context, from the 1975 Asilomar conference through the recombinant DNA era to the present, and asking what 'responsible innovation' really means when scientists take the initiative.
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Jan 2018Reflecting on a paper by a synthetic biologist engaging with the social and ethical dimensions of the field; an example of the 'responsible language use' conversation crossing the science/social science boundary.
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Apr 2023A historical excavation which finds 'gene shears' in the archives alongside 'gene scissors', tracing the surprisingly rich prehistory of the cutting metaphors that now feel inevitable in CRISPR discourse.
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Oct 2023Where the synbio and AI strands converge: as DNA language models are trained on genomic sequences, the metaphors of linguistics and genetics collide in productive and sometimes confusing ways.
Section Four
Gene Drive: Metaphors and Communication
Gene drive generated some of the most charged metaphors in recent science communication (locomotives, Trojan horses, time bombs, Pandora's boxes) alongside a concerted effort by scientists and communicators to use language responsibly. This section follows that story from the first metaphor analysis through to collaborative research with practitioners.
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Dec 2015The first post on gene drive metaphors, tracing 'gene drive' back to a locomotive analogy used by a scientist in 2003 to explain what a genetic driver does. The train metaphor quietly shaped a whole field's language.
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Jan 2019A first systematic look at the communication challenges posed by gene drive, a technology that is technically complex, ethically contested, and ecologically irreversible, and what responsible communication might look like.
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Feb 2019Extending the metaphor analysis to mammalian gene drive, including 'daisy chain', 'copycats' and 'dice', and asking why drives in mammals attract a quite different imaginative vocabulary to drives in mosquitoes.
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Jun 2019A reflection on researchers' experiences of communicating gene drive and an examination of the gap between the language they use among themselves and what works (or doesn't) in public discourse.
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Jul 2019Pandora's box as a recurring metaphor for gene drive — tracing its uses in science and media, and what the myth adds (and obscures) when applied to a technology whose effects, once released, cannot be recalled.
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Sep 2019Gene drive is not just 'GM by another name'. The conflation of the two in public discourse creates serious communication problems. A post about what happens when imprecise terminology shapes both fear and misplaced reassurance.
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Sep 2019A companion to the GM post examining the confusion between gene drives in insects and microbial gene drives and asking why the terminological slippage matters for public understanding and policy.
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Oct 2019A methodological reflection on what it means to do media analysis of a fast-moving science story, including the literal 'road called gene drive' found in a Lexis Nexis search, and what it taught me about the limits of keyword searching.
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Nov 2019Headlines about gene drive routinely exaggerate precision, certainty and speed. This post dissects specific examples and argues that misleading headlines do concrete harm to public deliberation about a technology that affects ecosystems.
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Jan 2020When gene drive for grey squirrel control was discussed in the UK press, the coverage revealed how national cultural narratives (native species, invasive species, conservation) shape how a technology is framed before it even exists.
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Feb 2020The Trojan horse metaphor in gene drive discourse: used both by proponents (a vehicle carrying a beneficial genetic payload into a population) and critics (a covert threat). A case study in how the same metaphor can serve opposite rhetorical purposes.
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Aug 2020Moving beyond individual metaphors to the broader narratives within which gene drive is embedded (control of nature, eradication of disease, conservation) and how these narratives interact with the metaphors used to make the technology legible.
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May 2021On the release of GM mosquitoes in Florida and the surprisingly unimaginative metaphors that accompanied the news. What can the absence of new language tell us about where the public imagination has and hasn't moved?
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Jan 2022Reporting on collaborative research with Aleksandra Stelmach: 30 interviews with gene drive scientists, communicators and NGOs about their lived experience of using metaphors and their uncertainty about which metaphors help and which harm responsible communication.
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Jun 2022Summarising published research on gene drive media coverage in the UK, US and Australia (2015–2019) which found that a rhetoric of researcher trustworthiness is doing much of the communicative work, in the absence of more substantive public deliberation.
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Jan 2023An examination of military metaphors for gene drive, such as 'biological bomb', 'time-delayed bomb', 'magic bullet', tracing them from Paul Ehrlich in 1906 to contemporary gene drive discourse, and asking what such language does to the ethical conversation.
Section Five
Synthetic Biology, the Media and the Bioeconomy
How synthetic biology is covered or not in the press, and what that means for public awareness, debate and the broader political economy of emerging biotechnology.
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Dec 2014Market analysts frame ethical and social issues as 'obstacles to growth'. This post dissects what that framing reveals and obscures about the relationship between commercial synthetic biology and responsible innovation.
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Apr 2015A Lexis Nexis analysis of 'bioeconomy' in English-language news: a word coined in 1997 that drives billions of euros of policy but barely registers in public debate. What does this media silence mean for democratic governance of synthetic biology?
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Oct 2020Is 'synthetic biology' being quietly retired in favour of 'engineering biology'? This post tracks the terminological shift and asks what is gained and lost when a field rebrands itself.
Section Six
Responsible Research and Innovation
The blog's sustained engagement with the RRI framework — asking what 'responsible' means in practice, in a context of commercial pressure, acceleration and genuine uncertainty about what synthetic biology will become.
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Nov 2014Two reports on public communication of synthetic biology prompt a question: can you stimulate public debate about a technology that most people have never heard of, and should you? A critical look at 'upstream engagement'.
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Jan 2016Examination of two kinds of pathways, the metabolic one and the innovation one, and the tension between them. A reflective post on what 'pathway to impact' means when the science itself is slow, uncertain and alive.
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Mar 2016The tension between the 'accelerated academy' and the time that responsible innovation requires, asking whether RRI is structurally incompatible with a research environment that rewards speed above reflection.
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Aug 2021Gene drive research has generated innovative models of community engagement, for example the 'Responsible Benefit-sharing Models', that go beyond the standard RRI framework. A post on what the gene drive case has taught about doing engagement differently.
Section Seven
Miscellaneous
Posts that don't fit neatly elsewhere: on myth, fiction, naturalness, fermentation and the deep cultural frameworks within which synthetic biology is received and imagined.
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Sep 2015A post on Frankenstein, Prometheus and the emerging sub-genre of synbio fiction asking whether old stories can still do ethical work in a world where the Frankensteinian moment is no longer hypothetical.
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Sep 2015As synthetic biology blurs the boundary between natural and artificial, the binary thinking that has structured ethical debate for centuries begins to fail. A philosophical post on fuzzy categories and what comes after the nature/culture distinction.
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Apr 2015Are humans just 'advanced fermenters', that is to say, organisms whose main role is to house and nourish microbes? A playful but profound post on microbiome science and what it means for how we understand ourselves in relation to synthetic biology's ambitions.
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Oct 2015A Google Images tour through the visual representations of synthetic biology, CRISPR, gene editing and biotechnology, asking what the dominance of blue helices, red tomatoes and scissors tells us about the cultural imagination of the life sciences.
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Dec 2015A post written for an ESRC Festival of Social Science event at Nottingham that places the work of the Synthetic Biology Research Centre in the context of responsible innovation, from bacteria fermenting industrial gases to the question of what social scientists are actually there to do.