Biopunk

Using equipment ordered from online biopunk shops, he is trying to manipulate the genome of a common (but not necessarily harmless) bacterium, Serratia marcescens.

[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. Biopunks hack genomic data, lining up human genomes next to mouse genomes to find out what the two species have in common and what they don't (surprise: they have way more in common than you could possibly ever imagine).

In addition to scientists, a number of artists and cultural critics – some of whom are now proudly branding themselves as "biopunks" – are also sounding warnings about the importance of giving the public a voice in how their bodies' genomic information gets used. […] Not every bioinformatics researcher necessarily considers herself to be pursuing the same cause as self-described biopunks, but together, they may represent a movement in the making, one dedicated to the proposition that the information that defines humanity is too precious to be private.

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.

At its heart, The Wind Up Girl is a biopunk thriller following a^([sic]) undercover corporate agent and a genetically modified woman – but its detailed, bleak depiction of the effects of climate change sets it apart.