Paper short abstract:

How do certain forms of life, and bioactivities, come to count as promising? This paper provides an account on how Norwegian Arctic and subarctic microbes came to be seen as holding great potentials for the production of next generation antibiotics

Paper long abstract:

Bioprospecting is the search for forms of bioactivity in nature holding a commercial potential. It is often performed through a fairly standardized set of steps starting with the harvesting of samples in natural environments, sample preparation, production of isolates and extracts, screening, and chemical production. People involved in bioprospecting refer to these serial practices as the 'biodiscovery pipeline'. This paper provides an ethnographic account on scientists work in the biodiscovery pipeline to unlock the potentials of rare and exotic microbes towards the production of antibiotics that are likely to not encounter resistance. It turns a special attention to how rare Arctic and subarctic environments are often invoked to advertise the extraordinary properties of marine microbes as economic agents. In the biodiscovery pipeline, microbes are translated from just nature, to samples and isolates in petri dishes, and eventually into digital collections (data). I describe how scientist work to overcome microbes' resistance to be cultured and to inhabit research infrastructures.The paper describes scientist's research practices as extractive, infrastructural, and future oriented. I inquiry on how promise is inbuilt in infrastructural work (Anand, Gupta and Appel, 2018), and how the marine microbial biodiversity came to count as a national resource in Norway.

Anand, N., Gupta, A. and Appel, H. The Promise of Infrastructure. London: Duke University Press.