Responsible Innovation for Synthetic Biology

Authors

  • Gregory Watson Author

Keywords:

synthetic biology, responsible innovation, governance, ethics, biosecurity

Abstract

This review examines responsible innovation for synthetic biology. The organizing question is how scientific opportunity, biosafety, biosecurity, public values, and distributional questions can be governed together. Ten related scholarly sources are synthesized through a decision-centered framework spanning problem definition, mechanism, measurement, evaluation, implementation, and governance. The review does not invent experiments, pooled estimates, or unreported quantitative results. It instead evaluates the strength and transferability of the available evidence, with particular attention to treating compliance checklists as substitutes for anticipatory and participatory governance. The resulting framework links technical or empirical performance to explicit use conditions and identifies tests that should precede wider adoption in research and translation in synthetic biology.

References

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Published

2026-08-08

Issue

Vol. 1 (2026): Archive

Section

Review

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Copyright (c) 2026 Convergence in Science and Society

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