Doctoral Dissertation Research: Stringing Life Together: Bioinformatics in the Post-Genomic Age

导读：生物信息学是为了应对这种数字“人口爆炸”而发展起来的学科。其实践者的目标是利用信息通信技术和计算机科学的工具来存储、共享、操纵和利用这大量的生物数据。随着基因和蛋白质的测序继续快速进行，生物信息学提供了合成、组织和使用这些大量数据的方法——一种新的“理论生物学”，用于跟踪种群和发现药物。在研究这一学科时，本论文将结合多地点人种志（剑桥，马萨诸塞州和新德里，印度）与档案研究，揭示生物信息学如何成为调查和理解生命的一种合理而有效的模式。该项目将研究生物信息学如何与信息和通信技术、全球电子和科学网络、人类基因组计划的愿景以及生物技术的商业联系在一起。有人认为，生物信息学超越了生命和信息的隐喻或实际合并；它的工具和实践将生命表现为一种无实体的、可操纵的、一维的弦。这些字符串编码了构成生命的具体概念，以及人类如何相互关联——生物信息学在文化上并非是惰性的。智力价值：这个项目将有助于我们理解计算、信息和通信技术以及生物技术产业如何影响我们对生命的理解，以及全球生物科学的动态。此外，本项目将探索混合科学学科（生物学+计算机科学）的实践-当代科学中日益流行的跨学科性在科学和技术研究中没有得到重视。更广泛的影响：该项目将阐明当代科学领域的知识创造实践，对21世纪的医学和社会有许多影响。这一批判将揭示在生物信息学研究生命的方法中被忽略和模糊的东西，并提出其他同样有效的研究生命世界的方法可能变得合理的方法。

Introduction: Bioinformatics is the discipline that grew up in response to this digital 'population explosion.' Its practitioners aim to use the tools of information and communications technology and computer science to store, share, manipulate, and make useful this vast amount of biological data. As the sequencing of genes and proteins continues apace, bioinformatics provides ways to synthesize, organize, and use this proliferation of data - a new 'theoretical biology' for tracking populations and discovering drugs. In examining this discipline, this dissertation will combine multi-sited ethnography (Cambridge, Massachusetts and New Delhi, India) with archival research to reveal how bioinformatics has become a plausible and effective mode of investigating and understanding life. The project will examine the ways in which bioinformatics has become enmeshed with information and communication technology, global electronic and scientific networks, the vision of the Human Genome Project, and the commerce of biotechnology. It will be argued that bioinformatics goes beyond a metaphorical or actual conflation of life and information; its tools and practices represent life as a disembodied, manipulable, one-dimensional string. These strings encode specific concepts of what constitutes life and how humans are related to one another - bioinformatics is not culturally inert. Intellectual merit: This project will contributing to our understanding of how computing, information and communications technology, and the biotechnology industry, are impacting our understanding of life, and the dynamics of global bioscience. In addition, this project will explore the practices of a hybrid scientific discipline (biology + computer science) - the increasingly prevalent interdisciplinarity in contemporary science has not been given significant attention in science and technology studies. Broader impact: The project will shed light on the knowledge-making practices of a field of contemporary science with many implications for twenty-first century medicine and society. This critique will reveal what is elided and obscured in a bioinformatic approach to life and suggest ways in which other, equally productive, means of investigating the living world might become plausible.