Forty two years ago, in February 1975, the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA [1] established guiding principles for safe conduct of experiments utilizing recombinant DNA technology, which facilitated the creation of a biotechnology industry in the 1980s. Since then, biotechnology advanced to its second-generation, also called “synthetic biology.” Synthetic biology involves applying the principles of engineering and chemical design to biological systems and includes two closely-related capabilities both of which may have wide utility in commerce and medicine. 1. Parts for Design and Assembly. While the transfer of already existing genes from one cell to another characterized an earlier phase
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