Yeast

Researchers: Jane Calvert and Erika Szymanski

Yeast, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae in particular, is one of our oldest companion species because of its essential contributions to wine, bread, beer, and myriad other fermented foods. Yeast is also crucial to industrial biotechnology and an important model organism in biological research. As such, S. cerevisiae has become the subject of the first attempt to redesign and synthesize a complete eukaryotic genome. We are examining this international ‘Sc2.0’ project through interviews and lab ethnography as it challenges boundaries in synthetic biology: designing the yeast genome to unpredictably “evolve on demand” (is this still design?), erasing the S. cerevisiae species barcode and incorporating sequences from other organisms (is this still S. cerevisiae?), promising applications in biofuels and better beer while focusing on scientific understanding, and pledging openness while engaging industry partners.

Publications

Szymanski, E. A. Remaking yeast: Metaphors as scientific tools in S. cerevisiae 2.0. BioSocieties. Published online 21 Sept 2018.

Szymanski, E.A. and Calvert, J. (2018) ‘Designing with living systems in the synthetic yeast project’ Nature Communications 9 (2950): 1-6.

Szymanski, E.A. (2018) What is the terroir of synthetic yeast? Environmental Humanities 10 (1): 40-62.

Calvert, J. and Frow, E. (2015) The synthetic yeast project as a topic for social scientific investigation. Macquarie Law Review 15: 27-37.

Blog post

Szymanski, E. A. and Calvert, J. (2017) Entangled with Synthetic Yeast: Social Dimensions of the Sc2.0 project. PLOS Synthetic Biology Blog, 5th April 2017.

Presentations

Szymanski, E. A. 'Microbes matter: Caring for our smallest collaborators' Pint of Science Festival, Edinburgh, May 2018

Szymanski, E. A. 'Being alive at very small scales' Big Bang Festival, Wigtown, February 2018

Calvert, J. ‘Synthetic yeast: a tale of 16 chromosomes’ Engineering Life Interdisciplinary Workshop on History of DNA Synthesis and the Organism, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, USA, November 2017

Szymanski, E. A. 'Yeast as a research object: past, present, and future' with Jane Calvert, Miguel Garcia-Sancho, and Niki Vermeulen. British Society for the History of Science Annual Meeting, York, July 2017

Szymanski, E. A. 'Social dimensions of synthetic yeast' Sc2.0 meeting, Singapore, June 2017

Calvert, J. ‘Engineering life? The case of synthetic yeast’ Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society Colloquium, University of California, Berkeley, USA, November 2016

Additional funding

Erika Szymanski’s research was supported by a BBSRC/ERASynBio grant ‘Inducible Evolution of Synthetic Yeast Genomes’ from May 2016 - December 2017.

Szymanski and Calvert are co-investigators on a University of Western Australian Research Collaboration Award led by biological artist Ionat Zurr called ‘Crossing kingdoms and disciplines: biological and cultural articulations and understandings of synthetic mammalian/yeast fusion cells’. More information on this project can be found here.