biopunks

Noun

biopunk (countable and uncountable, plural biopunks)

1. (countable) A hobbyist who experiments with DNA and other aspects of genetics.
   • Using equipment ordered from online biopunk shops, he is trying to manipulate the genome of a common (but not necessarily harmless) bacterium, Serratia marcescens.2014 January 10, Jim Holt, “The Music Gene”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
2. (uncountable) A technoprogressive movement advocating open access to genetic information.
   • [I]t's the biopunk revolution. Biopunks are the visionaries and biotech wizards whose imaginations were set on fire by the knowledge that scientists had finally sequenced the human genome last year. Biopunks get off on creative genetic engineering, RNA research, cloning, and protein synthesis....2001 August 8, Annalee Newitz, “Biopunk”, in San Francisco Bay Guardian, archived from the original on 20 Dec 2002
3. (uncountable) A science fiction genre that focuses on biotechnology and subversives.
   • In the early nineties there grew up biopunk, a derivative sub-genre building not on IT but on biology, the other dominating scientific field of the end of the twentieth century. Individuals are enhanced not by mechanical means, but by genetic manipulation of their very chromosomes.1997 September 13, Michael Quinion, “Biopunk”, in World Wide Words, archived from the original on 08 Dec 2015