A main objective of our project is to combine oral histories, archival searches and other traditional methods for historical research with quantitative data, so that we can develop a new approach to the study of the history of genomics. Our quantitative data is now freely available online after more than … (Read more)
Every two years, academic researchers join scientists and representatives from leading pig breeding companies at the verdant campus of the University of Kent, just outside of Canterbury. The event, the Pig Breeders' Roundtable, has been held for over 40 years, and was until the last decade hosted at Wye College … (Read more)
Nothing about the city centre of Oslo would tell you that you’re in the same country as the sharp-edged fjords that characterise the north of Norway. Nothing directly, that is; indirectly, the city’s excellent public transportation, copious public sculptures, and other amenities speak to the wealth derived from oil and … (Read more)
The TRANSGENE project was invited to a workshop organised by the National Human Genome Research Institute of the United States (NHGRI) to explore both historical perspectives and present-day prospects of genomics research. The meeting gathered academic scholars and administrators involved in past and present NHGRI initiatives, such as the Human … (Read more)
Portraits of blue-skies research at Carlsberg Laboratory Claes Gausmann, yeast geneticist at Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, tells me that the problem with automating yeast research is akin to the problem with automating fly flipping as described by Jenny Bangham in her work on Drosophila stock centers. It should not be … (Read more)
Rachel Ankeny and Sabina Leonelli have done a great deal to shape and populate history and philosophy of science attention to model organisms through their joint work over the past two decades. At present, that work is continuing to play out in Ankeny's Australian Research Council-funded project “Organisms and Us: … (Read more)
As I scuffed my shoes on scattered tree branches, bits of broken asphalt, and varied road debris with fast-moving lorries and sports cars whizzing past my right shoulder, it occurred that one of the principle scientific advantages of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is isolation. While the laboratory campus is on … (Read more)
Ahead of the formal call for papers for the 2019 British Society for the History of Science conference (which will be held in Edinburgh, 10-13 July), we would like to request expressions of interest in participating in a panel at the conference on the theme of working with large datasets … (Read more)
The first peer-reviewed publication arising from the TRANSGENE project has now been published online by the journal Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. Entitled 'Sequencing through thick and thin: Historiographical and philosophical consequences', the paper by James Lowe details a more inclusive conception of DNA sequencing … (Read more)
At the recent conference of the European Society for the History of Science in London, the TRANSGENE team organised a symposium chaired by Robert Bud on the crucial role of European transnational collaboration in the history of genomics. We argued that the narrative that equates genomics with human genomics, and … (Read more)
On 22nd August, TRANSGENE took part in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world. As part of the ‘Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas’ strand, James Lowe presented a show entitled ‘Will Pigs Save Our Bacon?’ at The Stand’s New Town Theatre on George Street. The Cabaret of … (Read more)
On July 18th, I attended a horizon-scanning workshop on food sustainability hosted by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. The aim of the meeting was to scope out the challenges facing food sustainability over the medium and long-term, and to examine what biological research and innovation is being conducted to try … (Read more)
Miguel Garcia-Sancho, PI of the TRANSGENE project and lead investigator of the human genome strand, visited Toronto and Montreal last April to conduct historical research and participate in an interdisciplinary workshop on medical innovation. He visited the archives of the University of Toronto Hospital for Sick Children and conducted oral … (Read more)
At the end of November, I followed in the footsteps of many of the pig geneticists whose work I have been researching, and visited the Jouy-en-Josas campus of the French Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA), just south of Paris. At there and other INRA sites in Paris itself, … (Read more)
First Advisory Board meeting The TRANSGENE team presented its first findings to an Advisory Board comprised by Stephen Hilgartner (Cornell University), Robert Bud (Science Museum, London), Michel Morange (University Paris 6 and Ecole Normale Superieure), Abigail Woods (King’s College, London) and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Max Planck Institute for the History of … (Read more)
When we think about prime-movers, proposing for the first time the idea of scientifically tackling the human genome, the usual suspects come to our mind: reputed biomedical Nobel Prize winners such as James Watson, Walter Gilbert or Renato Dulbecco, who formulated their grand idea in the front pages of Science, … (Read more)
…at the British Society for the History of Science conference Amongst the sizeable Edinburgh contingent at the annual British Society for the History of Science conference, this year held in York, were representatives from the TRANSGENE project team. Miguel García-Sancho presented the progress on the yeast strand of the project … (Read more)
The TRANSGENE project operates within the Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) subject group at the University of Edinburgh. This multidisciplinary affiliation, and association with the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation (ISSTI) research network, enables us to discuss our work with researchers that have a wide … (Read more)
Just as classifications of species, genes, stages of development, or macromolecules can shape research in biology, classification in the humanities and social sciences can condition our analyses. In the pig strand of the project I’m working on, classifying people, practices and institutions is necessary. My aim is to explain, so … (Read more)
Writing the history of the yeast genome project starting from the end, more precisely the chromosome ends, can be an instructive exercise. Chromosome ends (telomeres) are specialised structures essential for chromosome maintenance and genome stability. As yeast telomeres are similar in structure and function to the telomeres of the other … (Read more)
In March 2017, I am conducting a three-week visiting post-doctoral fellowship at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI, Cambridge UK), for the bibliometric and “big data” strand of the project. I am collaborating with the EBI’s Literature Services to advance the project’s aims of mapping institutional networks in genomic sequencing initiatives … (Read more)
In the TRANSGENE project we are committed to using approaches from different disciplines to make sense of the historical material, and to generate new data from which to form a picture of the genomic research. One of the key approaches is the use of quantitative methods, imported from the social … (Read more)
My week-long visit to the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) in Florence has proved to be a remarkable opportunity for investigating the ‘behind the scenes’ of European biotechnology policies in the 1980s and 1990s. During my visit in Florence I mainly examined documents available in the Gordon Adam’s … (Read more)
In November 2016 Miguel Garcia-Sancho, James Lowe and I attended the Workshop on Scientific Archives organised by Anne Flore-Laloë, archivist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. The meeting brought together tens of archivists from Germany, France, Switzerland, UK, US and Canada. The workshop presentations focused on best … (Read more)
