Transgene

Description

On Monday 15th November, Miguel García-Sancho and James Lowe will present their work from the TRANSGENE project at the regular Science, Technology and Innovation Studies seminar series. Their presentation, 'Differentiating and historicising genomics: the value of mixed-methods and multi-species research', will explore the mixed-methods approach they have used throughout the project, and a selection of fruits from it.

The Human Genome Project has strongly influenced perceptions of the nature and history of genomics, and has come to represent the enterprise of genomics as a whole, in both popular and scholarly accounts. Through a mixed-methods and multi-species approach over the course of the ERC-funded ‘TRANSGENE: Medical Translation in the History of Modern Genomics Project’, we have elucidated how and why this is problematic. The Human Genome Project exhibited idiosyncratic sociological, organisational, collaborative and methodological dynamics when compared with genomic research concerning other species, but also other genomic research on the human. 

To move beyond a Human Genome Project-centred account of genomics, we have primarily examined three species: the bakers’ and brewers’ yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), Homo sapiens and the pig (Sus scrofa). We pursued archival and oral history research methods in conversation with social network analysis to identify and interpret alternative modes of collaboration and organisation around DNA sequencing. These allowed us to identify differences between yeast, human and pig genomics at various levels. From this, we generated new lines of inquiry into the genealogies that led genomics to take distinct shapes for each species, enabling us to peel back the infrastructuring work that has commensurated the objects and processes of genomics. 

Based on this research, we have been able to differentiate and historicise: key objects and products of genomics such as reference genomes; the relationship of particular species-specific scientific communities to genomic sequencing; and the periodisations and trajectories of genomic endeavours. In appreciating how these differences across species manifest in objects, tools and resources with varying affordances and limitations, we conclude by assessing the consequences for an understanding of translation that is not dominated or anchored by the atypical example of the Human Genome Project.

About: 

James Lowe is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, working on the TRANSGENE project. He is interested in the history and philosophy of biology, particularly genetics, genomics and developmental biology. As part of the TRANSGENE project, he is concerned with translational research and works on the development of genomic science and the history of pig genome mapping and sequencing initiatives in particular. Previously, he received his PhD at the University of Exeter, and subsequently pursued a postdoctoral fellowship there, evaluating a funding intervention initiated by the British Pharmacological Society. 

Miguel García -Sancho is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests are in the history of contemporary biomedicine, with special emphasis on the transition between molecular biology and new forms of knowledge production at the fall of the 20th century: biotechnology, bioinformatics and genomics. He leads the TRANSGENE project funded by the European Research Council. His research focuses on the history of concerted DNA mapping and sequencing initiatives, with special attention to the human and other whole-genome projects that proliferated in the 1980s and 1990s. Along with his team, he has produced a large dataset documenting the practice of DNA sequencing. He has also investigated the emergence of agricultural biotechnology and the cloning of Dolly the sheep. His book Biology, Computing and the History of  Molecular Sequencing: From Proteins to DNA was published by Palgrave-Macmillan. He previously worked as a journalist and is interested in science communication and public engagement.