Abstract
Synthetic biology has typically been understood as a kind of engineering science in which engineering principles are applied to biology. The engineering orientation of synthetic biology has also received a fair deal of criticism. This paper presents an alternative reading of synthetic biology focusing on the basic science oriented branch of synthetic biology. We discuss the practice of synthetic modeling and how it has made synthetic biologists more aware of some fundamental differences between the functioning of engineered artifacts and biological organisms. As the recent work on the concepts of noise and modularity shows, synthetic biology is in the process of becoming more “biology inspired”.
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To which extent biological organisms gain control over their functioning by self-organization arising from interacting oscillations is an open question. Living systems do also rely on such decoupled controllers as genes (see Bechtel, W. and Abrahamsen, A., “Complex Biological Mechanisms: Cyclic, Oscillatory, and Autonomous”, in: C. A. Hooker (Ed.), Philosophy of Complex Systems. Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, vol. 10. Oxford: Elsevier 2011, pp. 257–285, for an excellent discussion on the role of different oscillations in biological systems).
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In the case of the Repressilator the order in which the genes are connected to each other, turned out to be crucial, too.
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Nandagopal, N. and Elowitz, M. B., “Synthetic Biology: Integrated Gene Circuits”, in: Science 333, 2011, pp. 1244–1248.
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Ibid. p. 1244.
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Ibid. p. 1244.
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See e.g. Çagatay, T., Turcotte. M., Elowitz M. B., Garcia-Ojalvo. J. and Süel, G. M., “Architecture-Dependent Noise Discriminates Functionally Analogous Differentiation Circuits”, in: Cell 139, 3, 2009, pp. 512–522.
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See e.g. http://wyss.harvard/edu/viewpage/264/a-new-model. Accessed at 5 January 2012.
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O’Malley and Soyer argue that systems and synthetic biology provide good examples of the various kinds of integrative pursuits taking place in contemporary science, see O’Malley, M. A. and Soyer, O. S., “The Roles of Integration in Molecular Systems Biology”, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2011, pp. 58-68.
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Ruder et al., ibid. p. 1249.
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Ibid.
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Knuuttila, T., Loettgers, A. (2013). Synthetic Biology as an Engineering Science? Analogical Reasoning, Synthetic Modeling, and Integration. In: Andersen, H., Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W., Uebel, T., Wheeler, G. (eds) New Challenges to Philosophy of Science. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5845-2_14
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