Engineering and ethical perspectives in synthetic biology

Synthetic biology has emerged as an exciting and promising new research field, garnering significant attention from both the scientific community and the general public. This interest results from a variety of striking features: synthetic biology is a truly interdisciplinary field that engages biologists, mathematicians, physicists and engineers; its research focus is applied; and it has enormous potential to harness the power of biology to provide scientific and engineering solutions to a wide range of problems and challenges that plague humanity. However, the power of synthetic biology to engineer organisms with custommade functionality requires that researchers and society use this power safely and responsibly, in particular when it comes to releasing organisms into the environment. This creates new challenges for both the design of such organisms and the regulatory process governing their creation and use.