Engineering began as an outgrowth of the craftwork of metallurgical artisans. In a constant quest to improve their handiwork, those craftsmen exhaustively and empirically explored the properties—alone and in combination—of natural materials. The knowledge accumulated from this exploration and experimentation with natural building blocks eventually led to today’s modern technologies.
Today, there is a parallel progression unfolding in the field of synthetic biology, which encompasses the engineering of biological systems from genetically encoded molecular components
Unlike other engineering disciplines, synthetic biology can—and should—be guided by the natural blueprints and organizational principles of evolution, the ultimate “tinkerer” at the cellular level.
Read the full, original story here: Engineering Life
