The Culture of Cell Culture

摘要

Culturing Life, Hannah Landecker's history of cell culture, is a sly commentary on our mixed-up, topsy-turvy biological world, circa 2007. Mouse-human hybrids, immortal cells, cloned puppies, genetically modified crops, and dinosaur proteins found in fossilized bone all suggest that organisms are plastic, unstable, and not even the masters of their own cells, which can live outside them, perhaps "forever." Landecker's work tracks the practices and technologies implicated in this unsettling state of affairs over the last century.