What Stories Do We Tell About the Critters Involved with CRISPR-Cas? Examining Scientists’ Reflections on Multispecies Relationships in Gene Editing Research

ABSTRACT

Scientists researching xenotransplantation and mosquito-focused gene drives are claiming breakthroughs in their fields due to the gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas. When speaking about these applications, scientists narrate them as tools to save human lives. Through this focus on human health, the critters who are edited and intimately involved remain obscured. To bring these creatures into the conversation, I engage with scientists in both fields and provide a space for them to reflect upon their research practices with non-human animals. Through this, scientists’ stories start to deviate from the focus of human health. Their narrations shift as they draw upon a broader range of repertoires incorporating environmental concerns and experiences of affect. My findings build upon feminist science studies by contributing more nuanced narrations of multispecies relationships in gene editing research. I advocate that cultivating space for diverse stories to emerge from researchers working with CRISPR-Cas can produce avenues for response-ability.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminist science studies
• gene editing
• multispecies
• CRISPR-Cas
• discourse analysis

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Nora Castle and Giulia Champion for organizing this special issue. Additionally, I’d like to thank Ruth Müller for her support, Sophia Rossmann and Georgia Samaras for their valuable feedback, and Hannah Maiorano for her keen eye.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Retroviruses are viruses which insert RNA genetic material into host cells. This then interferes with the host’s genome causing the host cell to replicate the virus. PERVs, as found in cell culture experiments, could infect human cells leading to immunodeficiencies or other ailments, hence the need to remove them prior to xenotransplantation (Niu et al. 2017).

2. CRISPR-Cas is used to modify cells to create genetically edited porcine embryos which are then implanted into sows to produce modified pigs. Many of the xenotransplantation veterinarians perform molecular biology tasks including using CRISPR-Cas constructs to introduce modifications to cells prior to implantation.

3. The findings reported in this study are representative of the specific group of scientists interviewed. While the emerging narrations were found in multiple interviews, the scope of this paper is limited to this collection of scientists, and future studies with a larger sample size would be useful to compare this exploratory study to a larger group.

4. All interviewees have been given pseudonyms for anonymity.

5. Further investigation into how scientists draw distinctions between animals used within laboratories for gene editing research and species outside of the lab is necessary to elaborate upon these tensions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amy Clare

Amy Clare is a PhD candidate in the Science and Technology Policy group at the Technical University of Munich. Her research focuses on multispecies relationships with genetically edited animals, especially in the fields of xenotransplantation and livestock agriculture.