Emerging Bioinformatic Networks: Contesting the Public Meaning of Private and the Private Meaning of Public

This paper explores the complexity of public/private identities in the emerging global economies of gene sequence mapping and analysis. In so doing we seek to offer a less over-determined acccount of what it means to describe institutional actors as either 'public' or 'private'. Instead, these 'codes' can be seen to offer actors a means of mutual positioning that, more usually conceals broader interdependencies within the world's bioinformatics networks.