Against the backdrop of unprecedented convergence between the digital and the corporeal in the life sciences, this book examines the 'meta-code of life' the conditions under which life is not only known or decoded, but also remade (or recoded) or rematerialised through bioinformatics and material biotechnologies.

Based on a series of STS-style ethnographies and interviews on the development of human biobanks and genomic open data initiatives in plant and animal engineering, the book begins by exploring what is 'known', examining the theories about life's informatic nature...