Institutionalization of CRISPR/Cas9 through Collaboration: A Sociological Perspective on Gene Editing

This paper analyzes the spread of CRISPR technologies through a sociological lens. What are the practices and social patterns underlying researchers’ capacity to multiply the applications of CRISPR technology? Moreover, how do these new applications become transferable and reliably reproduced in different laboratories; that is, how do they become institutionalized?

In order to address these questions, bibliometric analysis and observational research were conducted. To first identify general patterns and attributes of the social networks underlying the advancement of CRISPR technology, citation and co-authorship patterns from published articles and reviews are analyzed. This analysis identifies key papers and authors that were central to the spread of CRISPR/Cas9 and offers metrics about density and modularity of the network. On their own these networks does not explain the social mechanisms by researchers develop and adopt new applications of CRISPR/Cas9. To gain purchase on this, longitudinal and descriptive data was collected over the course of two years from observational research at laboratories in the San Francisco Bay Area. This ethnographic research involved attending regular lab meetings and conferences, listening in on meetings with collaborators, shadowing researchers on the lab bench, and interviews with researchers and staff in academic organizations.

The data from these observations suggests that in the process of entering new collaborative relationships between research programs, researchers have the opportunity to exchange tacit knowledge about how to successfully put new applications of CRISPR/Cas9 into practice. These opportunities are particularly salient when collaboration occurs between scientific research programs from different fields and problem areas. The results from this study suggests that without an understanding of how scientists develop standards of practice through collaboration, ongoing efforts by scientists, ethicists and policy makers to regulate the applications of CRISPR/Cas9 through bureaucratic means are incomplete.