Those given to grand statements about the future often proclaim this to be the century of biology in the same way that the 20th century was that of physics and the 19th was the century of chemistry. Synthetic biology's potential provides a basis for such boosterism; life reprogrammed to produce useful new products, take new forms and act in helpful ways. Honouring that promise will not be easy. Understanding biology's capacity to process information, and thus control itself, is a much more challenging puzzle than mastering the parcelled world of software and hardware. Taking years to create a working and gate is therapeutically very promising. But it is a very small step on the way to controlling life as a coder controls a computer.
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