[randomscientist]

This is Patrick, I lead our Design team here. Rather than commercial applications being held back by synthesis prices, it's the large scale demand from foundries ours that helps synthesis companies scale up their processes. If you assume that synthetic biology is going to be done by-hand for the foreseeable future, demand doesn't scale as quickly and prices stay high.

[snewk]

in other words, the robots are coming to steal our jobs?

[dekhn]

Robots are coming to handle the tedious, manual labor, so that we can focus on more interesting pursuits. Then, the robots will be able to do that, and we can retire.