Paper short abstract:

Yeast has been our domesticated servant for millennia, but how might we be differently entangled with a radically re-engineered synthetic yeast genome?

Paper long abstract:

Yeast is perhaps one of our oldest companion species, and because of its essential contribution to the production of wine, bread and beer it has been our domesticated servant for millennia. It is also crucial to much industrial biotechnology, and is an important model organism for genetics. In this presentation I examine an on-going attempt to re-design and re-imagine the genome of the yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae, by drawing on interviews and lab ethnography.

This large-scale 'Saccharomyces cerevisiae 2.0' project involves constructing a 'neochromosome', and building in the ability to evolve the yeast on demand. The research promises applications like biofuels and better beer, but a central aim is to make a genome that can further biological understanding.

Questions arise about whether this re-design will result in the production of a new species. While the researchers on the project feel that the changes they are making to the genome are 'aggressive', they have been surprised at the tolerance of the yeast. Its 'yeastiness' is maintained.

This idea of 'yeastiness' is my starting point to explore questions about what it means to be entangled with a synthetic, instrumentalized version of this familiar organism, and to ask what, if anything, it can tell us about the engineering of 'life'.