Synthetic biology, a multidisciplinary field involving designing and building with DNA, often designs and builds in microorganisms. The role of these microorganisms tends to be understood through metaphors making the microbial cell like a machine and emphasizing its passivity: cells are described as platforms, chassis, and computers. Here, I point to the efficacy of such metaphors in enacting the microorganism as a particular kind of (non-)participant in the research process, and I suggest the utility of employing metaphors that make microorganisms a different kind of thing—active participants, contributors, and even collaborators in scientific research. This suggestion is worth making, I argue, because enabling the activity of the microorganism generates opportunities for learning from microorganisms in ways that may help explain currently unexplained phenomena in synthetic biology and suggest new experimental directions. Moreover, “activating the microorganism” reorients relationships between human scientists and nonhuman experimental participants away from control over nonhuman creatures and toward respect for and listening to them, generating conditions of possibility for exploring what responsible research means when humans try to be responsible toward and even with creatures across species boundaries.

合成生物学是一个涉及 DNA 设计和构建的多学科领域，通常在微生物中进行设计和构建。这些微生物的作用往往通过隐喻来理解，使微生物细胞像一台机器并强调其被动性：细胞被描述为平台、底盘和计算机。在这里，我指出了这种隐喻在将微生物塑造为研究过程中一种特定类型的（非）参与者方面的功效，并且我建议使用隐喻的效用，使微生物成为一种不同的事物——积极的参与者、贡献者，甚至是科学研究的合作者。我认为，这个建议值得提出，因为启用微生物的活动可以为向微生物学习提供机会，从而有助于解释合成生物学中目前无法解释的现象，并提出新的实验方向。此外，“激活微生物”重新调整了人类科学家和非人类实验参与者之间的关系，从对非人类生物的控制转向尊重和倾听它们，为探索当人类试图对甚至是负责时负责任的研究意味着什么创造了可能性。与跨越物种界限的生物。