The notion of a signal plays a very important role in contemporary biology. From cell signaling to environmental signals as external determinants of gene expression, signals are conceptual cornerstones to models of life. In the lab, they are experimentally manipulated and pharmaceutically targeted objects.
Intellectual merit Unlike the gene, the signal has received little attention in the science and technology studies literature. This research project examines how signals came into life science, with a focus on metabolic hormone biology after 1950. The book that will eventually result from this research will elaborate the history of the discoveries of hormonal mechanisms; it will, at the same time, serve as an unprecedented theoretical resource for understanding where the biological notion of a signal comes from and what shapes its uses today in biology and society. Much is known about the history of the idea of DNA as information. The history of the signal however, is an underexplored story of cybernetics and engineering practices of control and communication on biology, a history that unfolds in the realms of steroid biochemistry, metabolic regulation, insect chemical communication, and work not at the cell?s nucleus but at its membranes. Related scholarship has focused on pre-1950 endocrinology and sex hormones; by contrast, this work will provide a compelling narrative of how hormones went molecular, explaining how the very category of hormone begins to fray as it is subsumed under the signal along with neurotransmitters, cytokines, and growth factors.
Potential Broader Impacts As life science turns increasingly toward fathoming protein-protein interactions, gene regulation, and the regulatory role of the cellular and external environment, this history becomes increasingly timely. Signals are constitutive to biological life and thought, and have profound impact on society in terms of models of the body and health, understandings of gene-environment interaction, and the consequent biotechnical outcomes of intervening in signaling cascades. An accessible history and theory of the signal will benefit readers in life sciences, history, philosophy and sociology of science, and a broader educated audience.
