Café Synthetique: Biology as Technology

Café Synthetique is the monthly meetup for the Cambridge synthetic biology community with informal talks, discussion and pub snacks.

This months' theme will focus on the concept of biology as technology, and particularly the fascination of mid-twentieth century plant breeders with mutation-inducing technologies such as X-rays and nuclear energy. They believed technology had the potential to enable complete and rational control over plant breeding as an industrial process. Are we any closer to that vision almost a century later?

We have two excellent speakers whose work focuses respectively on the history and application of technologies to modify genes for plant breeding.

Free bar snacks and good conversation provided!

Talks and speakers

"Biology as Technology: An Unexpected History of Innovation in Living Things"
Dr Helen Anne Curry
Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Helen's work traces the history of genetic research tools for plant breeding arising from other areas of technological innovation in the twentieth century—from electromechanical to chemical to nuclear. It was thought that these mutation-inducing methods would extend human control over nature and allow breeders to genetically engineer crops and flowers to order. Creating a new crop or flower would soon be as straightforward as innovating any other modern industrial product.
Needless to say, the story doesn't quite end that way...

"Breeding technology for better crops"

Dr Alison Bentley
NIAB

Alison is Director of Genetic and Breeding at NIAB, a pioneering plant science organisation in Cambridge. She will bring the story of biology as technology up to the present day and beyond, describing how the vision of 'evolution to order' is still some way off a century later. X-ray, chemical and nuclear technologies are still put to use to exploit novel genetic diversity and genomics tools for crop improvement. However, new biologically-derived tools which allow precise genome editing, such as CRISPR-Cas9, may be edging us ever closer to hopeful vision of the mid-twentieth century breeders.

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