Dissertation Research: "I contain multitudes": Genetic chimeras and material negotiations of identity

论文研究：“我包含众多”：基因嵌合体和身份的物质谈判

• 批准号: 0432120
• 负责人: Michael Lynch
• 金额: $ 1.19万
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-08-01 至 2006-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0432120&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; contain; multitudes; Genetic

This Science and Technology Studies Dissertation Improvement Grant uses ethnographic and historical research methods to trace the emergence and characterization of genetic mosaics and chimeras. Four cases of human genetic multiciplicity will be compared. In each case, genetically different cell populations co-exist in a human body, or travel between bodies (calling into question the very notion of a body). Spontaneous human chimeras result from tissue exchanged between fraternal twins in utero, or the complete fusion of embryos early in development. Genetic mosaics result from a single-cell mutation, which persists in an altered cell line that proliferates in the organism's body alongside the original cell population. The term microchimerism describes the persistence of fetal cells and DNA molecules in the maternal body, and maternal cells in the child's body, both of which persist after pregnancy. Microchimerism also refers to a condition of an organ recipient in whom donor cells proliferate and persist. This dissertation uses these four cases of genetic multiplicity (chimerism, mosaicism, fetal microchimerism and transplantation microchimerism) to gain empirical, and critical, purchase on the historical and cultural specificity of the premise that humans are genetically unique and discrete. In other words, the aim is to focus closely and critically on the idea that individual identity is necessarily bound to a unique and singular genome. In contemporary biomedicine and biopolitics, genetics and identity are becoming increasingly conflated, but the chain from genes to selves is neither inevitable nor inviolable. Fieldwork for this project explores clinical and experimental situations in which humans are constructed as multiple, genetically. Laboratory researchers and technicians concerned with mosaic and chimeric phenomena sort cells and molecules into discrete categories of male and female, normal and pathological, maternal and fetal, animal and human, and self and other. This project examines the thesis that genetic identity on the microscopic level and human selves on the holistic level are co-produced and mutually stabilized. Most of the time, the genetic identity of a few cells (such as in forensic testing and prenatal screening) can be made to overlap with a self-contained individual. The cases in this study offer an opportunity to explore circumstances in which genetic heterogeneity disrupts notions of individuality and identity. Reversing this relationship, the project also examines whether socio-political notions of individuality and identity are woven into the practical assignment of genetic identity of cells and molecules in the laboratory. NSF funds will support fieldwork in the United States, Canada and the U.K., at laboratories, clinics, conferences and support groups in which knowledge about genetic mosaics and chimeras is produced, negotiated and contested. Investigators and technicians in each of the research communities will be interviewed. Patient activists who challenge the ways in which they are classified as monstrous, marginal or hybrid also will be interviewed. Participant ethnographic research will be conducted at several conferences at which researchers from different communities come together and discuss emergent technical and medical issues associated with the construction of human genetic identity and multiplicity. The intellectual impact of this dissertation project primarily is in the areas of social studies of genetics and identity, empirical work on biosociality and lay activism, and theoretical criticisms of essentialist or determinist notions of genetics. As a study of selfhood and multiplicity identified with the very material of the body and in technical practice, it supplements theoretical literatures about the self, fragmentation, and multiplicity. The broader impact and implications of this study have to do with individuals and groups who contend with biomedical characterizations of their identities. The coexistence of multiple biological identities in these individuals may provide institutional and bureaucratic bases for classifying and excluding persons. Furthermore, microchimerism research suggests that we are all genetically distributed at some level. This project will make important and timely contributions to political and technical debates about genetic identification; debates that both reify the genetic individual and, ironically, contribute to the proliferation of exceptions.

这项科学技术研究论文改进资助使用民族志和历史研究方法来追踪遗传嵌合体和嵌合体的出现和特征。将比较人类基因多重性的四种情况。在每一种情况下，基因不同的细胞群在人体中共存，或者在人体之间流动（这就对人体的概念提出了质疑）。自发的人类嵌合体产生于子宫内异卵双胞胎之间的组织交换，或发育早期胚胎的完全融合。基因嵌合是由单细胞突变引起的，这种突变持续存在于被改变的细胞系中，在生物体体内与原始细胞群一起增殖。“微嵌合”一词描述的是胎儿细胞和DNA分子在母体内的持续存在，以及母体细胞在婴儿体内的持续存在，两者在怀孕后都会持续存在。微嵌合也指器官受者体内供体细胞增殖并持续存在的情况。本文利用这四种基因多样性（嵌合、嵌合、胎儿微嵌合和移植微嵌合）的案例，在人类基因独特和离散的前提下，获得历史和文化特异性的经验和批判性的购买。换句话说，其目的是密切关注和批判的观点，即个人身份必然与独特和单一的基因组联系在一起。在当代生物医学和生物政治学中，基因和身份正变得越来越混淆，但从基因到自我的链条既不是不可避免的，也不是不可侵犯的。这个项目的实地考察探索了人类被构建为多重基因的临床和实验情况。研究嵌合和嵌合现象的实验室研究人员和技术人员将细胞和分子分为男性和女性、正常和病理、母体和胎儿、动物和人类、自我和他人等不同的类别。这个项目考察了微观层面的基因认同和整体层面的人类自我是共同产生和相互稳定的。大多数情况下，少数细胞的遗传特性（如在法医测试和产前筛查中）可以与一个独立的个体重叠。本研究中的案例提供了一个机会来探索遗传异质性破坏个性和身份概念的情况。该项目还研究了个性和身份的社会政治概念是否被编织到实验室中细胞和分子遗传身份的实际分配中。美国国家科学基金会的资金将支持在美国、加拿大和英国的实验室、诊所、会议和支持小组进行实地考察，在这些小组中，有关基因嵌合体和嵌合体的知识是产生、谈判和争论的。每个研究团体的调查人员和技术人员将接受采访。挑战将患者归类为怪物、边缘或混血儿的方式的患者积极分子也将接受采访。参与者人种志研究将在几个会议上进行，来自不同社区的研究人员聚集在一起，讨论与构建人类遗传身份和多样性相关的新兴技术和医学问题。本论文项目的智力影响主要是在遗传学和身份的社会研究领域，生物社会性和非专业行动主义的实证工作，以及对遗传学本质主义或决定论概念的理论批评。作为对自我和多样性的研究，它认同于身体的材料和技术实践，它补充了关于自我、碎片和多样性的理论文献。这项研究的更广泛的影响和含义与那些与生物医学特征相抗衡的个人和群体有关。这些人身上多重生物身份的共存可能为分类和排斥个人提供制度和官僚基础。此外，微嵌合研究表明，我们所有人的基因在某种程度上都是分布的。该项目将对有关遗传鉴定的政治和技术辩论作出重要和及时的贡献；具有讽刺意味的是，辩论既具体化了基因个体，又助长了例外的扩散。