biopunk

plural biopunks

1. countableA hobbyist who experiments with DNA and other aspects of genetics.

   Using equipment ordered from online biopunk shops, he is trying to manipulate the genome of a common (but not necessarily harmless) bacterium, Serratia marcescens.

   2014 January 10, Jim Holt, “The Music Gene”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

2. uncountableA technoprogressive movement advocating open access to genetic information.

   2 more examples

   [I]t's the biopunk revolution. Biopunks are the visionaries and biotech wizards whose imaginations were set on fire by the knowledge that scientists had finally sequenced the human genome last year. Biopunks get off on creative genetic engineering, RNA research, cloning, and protein synthesis. Biopunks hack genomic data, lining up human genomes next to mouse genomes to find out what the two species have in common and what they don't (surprise: they have way more in common than you could possibly ever imagine).

   2001 August 8, Annalee Newitz, “Biopunk”, in San Francisco Bay Guardian, archived from the original on 20 Dec 2002

   In addition to scientists, a number of artists and cultural critics – some of whom are now proudly branding themselves as "biopunks" – are also sounding warnings about the importance of giving the public a voice in how their bodies' genomic information gets used. […] Not every bioinformatics researcher necessarily considers herself to be pursuing the same cause as self-described biopunks, but together, they may represent a movement in the making, one dedicated to the proposition that the information that defines humanity is too precious to be private.

   2002 February 27, Annalee Newitz, “Genome liberation: The information that details who we are is too important to be privately owned”, in Salon, archived from the original on 11 Jul 2015

3. uncountableliteratureA science fiction genre that focuses on biotechnology and subversives.

   At its heart, The Wind Up Girl is a biopunk thriller following a^([sic]) undercover corporate agent and a genetically modified woman – but its detailed, bleak depiction of the effects of climate change sets it apart.

   2017 January 19, “Five of the best climate-change novels”, in The Guardian

   1 more example

   In the early nineties there grew up biopunk, a derivative sub-genre building not on IT but on biology, the other dominating scientific field of the end of the twentieth century. Individuals are enhanced not by mechanical means, but by genetic manipulation of their very chromosomes.

   1997 September 13, Michael Quinion, “Biopunk”, in World Wide Words, archived from the original on 08 Dec 2015