TY - JOUR
T1 - Beyond the Egg and the Sperm?
T2 - How Science Has Revised a Romance through Reproductomics
AU - Lamoreaux, Janelle
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by National Science Foundation and Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropology Research.
Funding Information:
Thanks to the editors of this special issue, Sonja van Wichelen and Jaya Keaney, who invited me to contribute and ushered this article through its early rough draft form to this published version. This article began almost ten years ago as a term paper for a graduate seminar. It matured through discussions with many mentors, including Cori Hayden, Sarah Franklin, and Emily Martin, as well as conversations with colleagues involved in the Arizona STS Initiative’s Works-in-Progress series. Feedback from editors of STHV and two anonymous reviewers was also crucial—thanks to each of you for taking the time to help me improve this piece. I also thank the participants and funders of the research discussed briefly in the “The Sperm's Exposome” section, including the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the National Science Foundation. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by National Science Foundation and Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropology Research.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2022/11
Y1 - 2022/11
N2 - Social scientists have shown that scientific characterizations of the egg and the sperm are shaped by gender stereotypes and cultural values. How have such characterizations been transformed by a recent embrace of -omics, when studies of reproduction increasingly go beyond genomics to incorporate proteomics, transcriptomics, exposomics, and other -omics perspectives? Scientists studying reproduction and analyzing eggs, sperm, and embryos are in some ways reimagining the roles, identities, and functions of gametes as fundamentally shaped by other molecular entities and environments. Such relational understandings of substances and processes, however, continue to operate through a teleology that often conscripts more nuanced -omics reflection into familiar genomic visions of sex and reproduction. While ideas of the gene as an alienable object may be unraveling, -omics efforts to go beyond the egg and the sperm are frequently constricted by an understanding of reproduction that remains tied to individualized bodies and by a genomically infused interpretation of the gamete as life itself.
AB - Social scientists have shown that scientific characterizations of the egg and the sperm are shaped by gender stereotypes and cultural values. How have such characterizations been transformed by a recent embrace of -omics, when studies of reproduction increasingly go beyond genomics to incorporate proteomics, transcriptomics, exposomics, and other -omics perspectives? Scientists studying reproduction and analyzing eggs, sperm, and embryos are in some ways reimagining the roles, identities, and functions of gametes as fundamentally shaped by other molecular entities and environments. Such relational understandings of substances and processes, however, continue to operate through a teleology that often conscripts more nuanced -omics reflection into familiar genomic visions of sex and reproduction. While ideas of the gene as an alienable object may be unraveling, -omics efforts to go beyond the egg and the sperm are frequently constricted by an understanding of reproduction that remains tied to individualized bodies and by a genomically infused interpretation of the gamete as life itself.
KW - gametes
KW - gender
KW - postgenomics
KW - reproduction
KW - reproductive technologies
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U2 - 10.1177/01622439221123943
DO - 10.1177/01622439221123943
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85140832719
VL - 47
SP - 1180
EP - 1204
JO - Science Technology and Human Values
JF - Science Technology and Human Values
SN - 0162-2439
IS - 6
ER -