Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
These structures open up new modes of knowledge creation through
the movement of data in virtual space. But the kind of knowledge that
emerges is dependent on and shaped by the hardware and software it
subsists on: data structures, directed graphs, databases, servers, and
compute farms.
These processes of fl attening are also processes of making data fi t
for travel. The sequencing “pipeline,” for instance, produces a particu-
lar kind of bioinformatic knowledge that is stripped of its messiness,
contingency, and situatedness; this process provides sequences with
their peculiar ability to travel and recombine as fl uid, universal objects.
Much has been made of the fact that bioinformatic biology is globaliz-
ing. Many accounts suggest that biological objects are becoming place-
free, homogeneous, and fl uid. But as far as biological work goes, this
uniformity and liquidity is not automatic—as this chapter has shown, it
is an achievement, a consequence of biological work. The pipelines and
ontologies and release cycles are ways of making heterogeneous and
lumpy data into smooth, universal data that can travel with ease.
In other words, this process is making the local appear universal.
Understanding how biology has become and is becoming global or
universal must begin with understanding how certifi ed knowledge is
produced in the labs and networks such that it can then travel through
global spaces. Biotechnology, personalized genomics, and so on seem
to be playing out on a worldwide scale; however, what is signifi cant
in these fi elds is how knowledge is made such that it
can
be global-
ized—how is it that a sequence produced at 320 Charles becomes
the
sequence of an elephant's genome? In this chapter we have seen that it
is movement through particular sorts of spaces, and in particular, move-
ment through the “sequencing pipeline,” that constitutes this sort of
knowledge production: the transformation from a particular material
sample to a universal (and universally certifi ed) digital representation
takes places through a detailed and carefully policed series of steps
acted out in space. The feature of globalization relevant to bioinformat-
ics is not deterritorialization, but rather interconnectedness: the specifi c-
ity of particular situations and conformations in particular laboratories
and networks has a greater ability to make their infl uence felt every-
where.
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The Broad's elephant becomes everyone's elephant. In assess-
ing the status and signifi cance of globalized biological knowledge, we
need to continually recall its dependence on the situations from which it
springs. Doing so will remind us that bioinformatic knowledge is never
automatically fl uid or universal, but always dependent on carefully con-
