The genetic engineering of microbial organisms offers benefits to society through biotechnology applications. Traditionally, the "engineering" of microbes to arrive at organisms with desired behavior has not been engineering in a strict sense. It has, rather, required months (more often years) of trial-and-error type of experiments, with the undertaking being more akin to art than engineering. Enter synthetic biology, a burgeoning area since the turn of the century that aims to put the engineering into genetic engineering. Here, we provide a short commentary on some advancements in this field. By relating these advances to recent progress in our understanding of extracellular electron transfer in bacteria, we also provide a perspective on synthetic biology having the potential to enable the programming of bacteria for electronics engineering-related applications such as biosensors.
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