Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Although Brendan had an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, he had
worked as a computer programmer for twenty-fi ve years—he assumed
that his “domain knowledge” of biology had very little to do with his
being hired. Rather, it was his software and database expertise that was
exactly what was required for this kind of biological work.
The pronouncement that “bioinformatics” occupies an under-laborer
status within biology is designed to suppress the importance of certain
new kinds of biological practices. Indeed, these practices are portrayed
as “unbiological”—they are, some biologists insist, just informatics or
just engineering or just management, and therefore distinct from the
real business of doing biology. Such workers, and the spaces in which
they work, should be removed, as far as is possible, from view.
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What
is at stake is perceptions about what biological practice
should look
like
. When Gilbert made his claim that sequencing was not science,
but production, he was right. But that fact has made many biologists
profoundly uncomfortable; biology, according to many, means making
hypotheses, doing experiments, and drawing conclusions about living
systems (whether this means using computers or not). It does not mean
building databases, managing information, and reorganizing laboratory
workfl ow. Yet these latter practices are now as much a part of biological
practice as the former. What we see in bioinformatics is biology trying
to come to terms with these different forms of work and knowledge
making. As attributions of value, the terms “bioinformatics” and “com-
putational biology” are weapons in a battle over what kinds of practices
will count as legitimate biology in the years to come.
Spaces of Work
In the rest of this chapter, I will show how these divisions of labor are
generated and maintained by the physical spaces in which these new
forms of biology take place. The organization of space manages the ten-
sion between different forms of knowledge work. Data-driven biology
requires not only specifi c divisions of labor, but also specifi c kinds of
spaces and movements within them. The “higher” (consumption) and
“lower” (production) forms of practice are accorded different sorts of
spaces and involve different sorts of physical movements. The architec-
ture and space within which the knowledge is produced contributes to
its epistemic value. Specifi c movements and confi gurations of people,
objects, and data act to verify and certify biological knowledge in vari-
ous ways. This section will draw primarily on fi eldwork that took place
during 2008 at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
