The Synthetic Microbiology Caucus: a fresh channel for exploring new ideas, challenging conventional wisdom and fostering community projects

© 2018 The Authors.Contemporary synthetic biology was established as a field of scientific and technological research in the early 2000s by electrical engineers and computational scientists – not by biologists. This foundational cause had numerous effects that have propagated to this day. The first is the focus on the relational logic of biological objects as a way to both understand why they work as they do and to reshape them for a different role – using as a mindframe the traditional hierarchy of parts/devices/systems. The second is the involvement of a diverse and playful community of SynBio practitioners that unleashes its imagination and creativity for overcoming academic constraints and IP barriers, culminating in the iGEM competition1 and the do-it-yourself (DIY) subversion2. The third is the emphasis on applications: most SynBio-related news that makes headlines are about the surprising possibilities brought about by the field, from the cheap production of artemisinin in yeast3 for fighting the scourge of malaria to the resurrection of Neanderthals4 together with their woolly mammoth5 pets. These angles bring novel perspectives and challenges to the more conventional fields of research in the life sciences and the biotechnological industries