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Szymanski EA, Schindler D. A (metaphorical) moment for RNA-based biotechnology? : Current metaphors for RNA limit development of and public communication about RNA-based technologies. EMBO Rep 2024; 25:3182-3186. [PMID: 38977892 PMCID: PMC11315921 DOI: 10.1038/s44319-024-00200-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2024] [Revised: 05/31/2024] [Accepted: 06/27/2024] [Indexed: 07/10/2024] Open
Abstract
Technical and societal hurdles are both likely to hinder the development of RNA biotechnologies. The use of current metaphors to describe RNA and its function could be an important factor for a common challenge.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erika A Szymanski
- Department of English, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80521, USA.
| | - Daniel Schindler
- Max-Planck-Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, 35043, Marburg, Germany
- Center for Synthetic Microbiology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany
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Jaton F. Groundwork for AI: Enforcing a benchmark for neoantigen prediction in personalized cancer immunotherapy. SOCIAL STUDIES OF SCIENCE 2023; 53:787-810. [PMID: 37650579 PMCID: PMC10543129 DOI: 10.1177/03063127231192857] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/01/2023]
Abstract
This article expands on recent studies of machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that crucially depend on benchmark datasets, often called 'ground truths.' These ground-truth datasets gather input-data and output-targets, thereby establishing what can be retrieved computationally and evaluated statistically. I explore the case of the Tumor nEoantigen SeLection Alliance (TESLA), a consortium-based ground-truthing project in personalized cancer immunotherapy, where the 'truth' of the targets-immunogenic neoantigens-to be retrieved by the would-be AI algorithms depended on a broad technoscientific network whose setting up implied important organizational and material infrastructures. The study shows that instead of grounding an undisputable 'truth', the TESLA endeavor ended up establishing a contestable reference, the biology of neoantigens and how to measure their immunogenicity having slightly evolved alongside this four-year project. However, even if this controversy played down the scope of the TESLA ground truth, it did not discredit the whole undertaking. The magnitude of the technoscientific efforts that the TESLA project set into motion and the needs it ultimately succeeded in filling for the scientific and industrial community counterbalanced its metrological uncertainties, effectively instituting its contestable representation of 'true' neoantigens within the field of personalized cancer immunotherapy (at least temporarily). More generally, this case study indicates that the enforcement of ground truths, and what it leaves out, is a necessary condition to enable AI technologies in personalized medicine.
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Affiliation(s)
- Florian Jaton
- Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland
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Kaufmann M. DNA as in-formation. WIRES. FORENSIC SCIENCE 2023; 5:e1470. [PMID: 37070086 PMCID: PMC10103537 DOI: 10.1002/wfs2.1470] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/08/2021] [Revised: 07/07/2022] [Accepted: 07/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Traces are fundamental vectors of information. This is the first of seven forensic principles formulated by the 2022 Sydney declaration. To better understand the trace as information, this article proposes the notion of in-formation. DNA is matter in becoming. DNA changes as it travels across forensic sites and domains. New formations occur as humans, technologies and DNA interact. Understanding DNA as in-formation is of particular relevance vis-à-vis the increase of algorithmic technologies in the forensic sciences and the rendering of DNA into (big) data. The concept can help identifying, acknowledging and communicating those moments of techno-scientific interaction that require discretion and methodical decisions. It can assist in tracing what form DNA will take and what consequences this may have. This article is categorized under:Crime Scene Investigation > From Traces to Intelligence and EvidenceForensic Biology > Ethical and Social ImplicationsForensic Biology > Forensic DNA Technologies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mareile Kaufmann
- Department of Criminology and Sociology of LawUniversity of OsloOsloNorway
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Chiapperino L, Paneni F. Why epigenetics is (not) a biosocial science and why that matters. Clin Epigenetics 2022; 14:144. [PMID: 36369214 PMCID: PMC9652908 DOI: 10.1186/s13148-022-01366-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2022] [Accepted: 10/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Epigenetic modifications offer compelling evidence of the environmental etiology of complex diseases. Social and biographical conditions, as well as material exposures, all modulate our biology with consequences for risk predispositions and health conditions. Elucidating these complex biosocial loops is one of the main challenges animating epigenetics. Yet, research on the development of epigenetic biomarkers often pulls in a direction that departs from a view of biological determinants of health embedded in their social and material environment. Taking the example of the epigenetics of cardiovascular diseases, this paper illustrates how common understandings of epigenetic biomarkers strongly lean toward considering them as mere targets for molecular intervention, rather than as correlates of a complex biological and social patterning of disease. This reductionism about biosocial dynamics of disease, we argue, hampers the pursuit of the goals epigenetics has given itself (in cardiology and beyond). If epigenetic mechanisms point to the deep socio-environmental embeddedness of our health, we conclude, future designs and methods of this research may require an improved methodological consideration of a biosocial perspective.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luca Chiapperino
- grid.9851.50000 0001 2165 4204STS Lab, Institute of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland ,grid.9851.50000 0001 2165 4204Quartier UNIL-Mouline, Institute of Social Sciences, Bâtiment Géopolis, Bureau 5556, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Francesco Paneni
- grid.412004.30000 0004 0478 9977University Heart Center, Department of Cardiology, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland ,grid.412004.30000 0004 0478 9977Center for Translational and Experimental Cardiology (CTEC), Department of Cardiology, University Hospital Zurich and University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
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Jones KM, Cook-Deegan R, Rotimi CN, Callier SL, Bentley AR, Stevens H, Phillips KA, Jansen JP, Weyant CF, Roberts DE, Zielinski D, Erlich Y, Garrison NA, Carroll SR, Ossorio PN, Moreau Y, Wang M. Complicated legacies: The human genome at 20. Science 2021; 371:564-569. [PMID: 33542123 PMCID: PMC8011351 DOI: 10.1126/science.abg5266] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
Millions of people today have access to their personal genomic information. Direct-to-consumer services and integration with other “big data” increasingly commoditize what was rightly celebrated as a singular achievement in February 2001 when the first draft human genomes were published. But such remarkable technical and scientific progress has not been without its share of missteps and growing pains.
Science
invited the experts below to help explore how we got here and where we should (or ought not) be going.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kathryn Maxson Jones
- School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
- Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Robert Cook-Deegan
- School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Arizona State University, Washington, DC, USA
| | - Charles N Rotimi
- Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Shawneequa L Callier
- Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA
- Department of Clinical Research and Leadership, George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, DC, USA
| | - Amy R Bentley
- Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health, National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Hallam Stevens
- School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
| | - Kathryn A Phillips
- Center for Translational and Policy Research on Personalized Medicine (TRANSPERS), Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
- Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
- Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Jeroen P Jansen
- Center for Translational and Policy Research on Personalized Medicine (TRANSPERS), Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
- Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Christopher F Weyant
- Center for Translational and Policy Research on Personalized Medicine (TRANSPERS), Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA
| | - Dorothy E Roberts
- Department of Africana Studies, Department of Sociology, and Law School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Dina Zielinski
- Université de Paris, INSERM 970, Paris Translational Research Centre for Organ Transplantation, Paris, France
- Doctoral School 515, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France
| | - Yaniv Erlich
- Efi Arazi School of Computer Science, IDC Herzliya, Herzliya, Israel
| | - Nanibaa' A Garrison
- Institute for Society & Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
- Institute for Precision Health, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
- Division of General Internal Medicine & Health Services Research, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
| | - Stephanie Russo Carroll
- Native Nations Institute, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724, USA
- Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724, USA
| | - Pilar N Ossorio
- Morgridge Institute for Research and University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison, WI, USA
| | - Yves Moreau
- University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium
| | - Maya Wang
- Human Rights Watch, New York, NY, USA
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