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SynBio&...Art - with Anna Dumitriu

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Are you a SynBio enthusiast like us that feels like what is done in the lab gets hardly translated in the real-world? Then you’re in the right place! In this new blog series, we are going to showcase how SynBio is slowly stepping in our day-to-day life. We are going to interview experts from different disciplines who are the examples that our beloved SynBio doesn’t remain on the lab bench or in a modelling project but is also becoming more tangible in real-life applications. We are starting this blog series with…Art!

Anna Dumitriu is a British visual artist with a background in fine art, who has spent over two decades working in laboratories, focusing on the topics of microbiology, infectious diseases, and synthetic biology. Her work revolves around Bioart, interconnecting biology with different art forms such as sculpture, installations and digital media. She has also collaborated with international museums such as The Nobel Prize Museum, ZMK and Ars Electronica, to name a few. She has done residencies in universities like University of California Irvine and is still an artist in residence at the University of Oxford. Her work spans from engaging in ethical and philosophical challenges, as showcased in the project “Trust Me, I’m an Artist”, to the study of interconnection between infectious diseases and past societies, as displayed in one of her recent works, “Plague Dress”. What brings together all her different projects is the aim to present complex biological concepts through the use of art medium, such as textiles, sculptures and digital art. Fostering a unique dialogue on contemporary scientific issues. Dumitriu's career is an example of how artistic creativity can give a different perspective on the narratives of science, leading to deeper and innovative insights.

Artistic and scientific fusion

Her approach is illustrative of how synthetic biology can be both a scientific and a creative endeavor. While for some people synthetic biology can be fascinating, others find it very problematic due to its ethical and safety aspects. And, hence, as art does, it raises important and complex questions. When does nature become unnatural? Can everything that humans are able to make be considered natural? Where, if at all, should we draw the line? How can we ensure synthetic biology is safe? Like synthetic biologists, artists are also concerned with similar ethical and philosophical questions.

Until synthetic biology becomes something tangible and part of our everyday life, it will be associated with science fiction. By rethinking its aesthetics and making connections with (personal) history, it becomes easier to give a new image to synthetic biology and make it closer to us. In her project the “Sequence Dress”, for example, Anna Dumitriu uses bacteria cultured from her own body, specifically Staphylococcus aureus, to bridge personal narratives with broader scientific themes. This method of incorporating live biological processes into her art not only challenges traditional artistic mediums but also enhances the scientific value of her work, making it a potent tool for education and engagement within the scientific community.

Artists and scientists have more in common than we think. In fact, the process of creation of an artist is not too distant from our Design step of the famous Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) process. Interestingly, Anna Dumitriu explained to us that when collaborating with scientists for her projects, her process included getting to know the science behind. What are you doing? What are you really interested in? Where did the technique you use come from? Who invented it? When? And that is how a BioArt (and a scientific project) starts.

Art as a medium for (synthetic) biology

Highlighting a landmark in her career, Dumitriu's 2015 residency at the Liu Lab for Synthetic Evolution at the University of California Irvine marked the beginning of her deep dive into synthetic biology. During her residency, curated by David Familian and Jens Hauser at the Beall Center for Art and Technology, she began to learn about CRISPR technology. She further explored this novel technology in two of her projects: “Biotechnology from the Blue Flower” and “Make do and Mend”. The latter was created as part of the Future Emerging Art and Technology (FEAT) residency programme, commemorating the anniversary of the first use of penicillin in a human patient in 1941. The art piece consists of an antique wartime women’s suit from 1941, where the holes and tears in the suit were repaired using a fabric patterned with E. coli grown on chromogenic media. Anna had edited that E. coli using CRISPR to remove the antibiotic resistance cassette included in its genome and encoded the phrase “make do and mend”, converted from ASCII code to base four and integrated into the DNA of the repair fragment. This piece showcases how patching and repairing the suit is a parallel to using molecular scissors to cut and paste a genome. This parallelism of mending clothes and “mending” bacterial genomes leads to the question of whether and to which extent editing the genome can be as easy as sewing clothes. Furthermore, while today genomic modification has become easier and easier, the threat of antibiotic resistance seems to not be stopping. Raising another important question: how are we going to “mend” antibiotic resistance?

This previous example showcases how BioArt serves as a platform for new conversations, as well as education within the (synthetic) biology community. Since she was firstly introduced to the central dogma of molecular biology, Anna has been fond of sharing how incredible and complex biology is. In one of her projects, she asked scientists to give an explanation of what DNA is. While a scientific definition is available, depending on people’s expertise and perception it can become a very challenging (and scary) question to answer. Even though most molecular biologists work with DNA daily, these molecules encompass profound philosophical and theological implications than those involved in the day-to-day laboratory practice. DNA is often considered the code of life and, at the same time, is the subject of the complex notion of continuous selection by the blind watchmaker, which makes DNA something tricky to think about.

Anna Dumitriu gives us the perfect example of how impactful and fascinating interdisciplinarity is. Her work not only pushes the boundaries of artistic expression, but also contributes significantly to scientific knowledge and public understanding of complex biological systems. Bringing microbiology, synbio and AI closer to a public that doesn’t speak the scientific language. As the field of synthetic biology continues to evolve, her contributions highlight the value of integrating diverse perspectives to enrich both scientific and artistic endeavors.

We would like to thank Anna Dumitriu for sharing her work with us. If you are interested in her work, you can check it out here, along with her past exhibitions, books and collaboration.

Current and Upcoming exhibitions: