Over the past two centuries, human uses of life as technology have intensified tremendously. During this period, hybridizations of industrial capitalism and university life science yielded a cornucopia of innovations, altering essential features of life and engendering unusual life forms. Modern biotechnology, epitomized in entities like in vitro cell cultures and transgenic organisms, rearranged nature’s order while simultaneously driving scientific efforts to understand living nature. This course pores over ways in which users of biotechnology refashioned life, as well as the serendipitous ramifications these undertakings had. Ultimately, the history of biotechnology reflects the protean place of humanity in nature, providing an unsettling perspective on the instability of our current ways of life.