Abstract
This chapter characterizes a series of events sampled from RNAi experiments. Here, the parasite’s biological development is functionally characterized by silencing the expression patterns of specific genes from the lice genome. The initiation and termination of RNAi is a complex affair, whose execution requires the choreography of many researchers and materials. This chapter looks at how these situations set up epistemically rewarding and meaningful interrelationships by enacting various kinds of representations. Examples include how checklists help orchestrate molecular manipulations; how bioinformatic tools act as powerful epistemic enhancers; how microinjections of RNAi in the wet lab are executed; termination of the experiment; and how biological materials and their accompanying data propagate in experimental pipeline. Through choreographies of enacted understanding, the community of skilled practitioners turn isolated material patterns into meaningful wholes. Conventional ways of thinking about experimental knowledge as a property of individual minds, break down when these scientific actions are scrutinized in detail.
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Solberg, M. (2021). Thinking Through Experiment: Enacting RNAi. In: A Cognitive Ethnography of Knowledge and Material Culture. Culture, Mind, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72511-2_5
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