[Dylan16807]

That article seems mostly seems worried about future projects. And I'm not sure what scientists you're talking about. Is it this line:

> 116 organizations have called for a moratorium on any release of synthetic organisms. The UN convention on Biological Diversity has urged countries to exercise precaution in any release of synthetic organisms to the environment.

Well if I click on the link I find a very interesting sentence:

> With synthetic biology, instead of swapping existing genes from one species to another (as in “ traditional” genetic engineering), scientists can write entirely new genetic code on a computer, "print" it out and then insert it into living organisms — or even try to create life from scratch.

Swapping a couple genes from one species to another sounds exactly like what they typically do to make a species glow.

And yet after that sentence they seem to change their definition of synthetic biology to include both those categories.

It tastes like doublespeak to me. "Companies are doing not just X but Y! Ban Y! (also we defined Y to include X)"

[titanomachy]

"Synthetic biology" in technical usage refers to custom sequences which are written on a computer then chemically assembled ex vivo. This is a widely used technique. It is distinct from the technique of extracting and amplifying a sequence from one organism and inserting it into another, although the results produced can be similar.

Source: I work in a molecular biology lab.

[Dylan16807]

So let's say there's a gene that might be useful to me. I have a listing of base pairs, but it would be very expensive to extract DNA/RNA from actual specimens. I chemically assemble an exact recreation and inject it. Is this synthetic biology?

[titanomachy]

Yep! Although the result might be the same, the technique used is synthetic biology. Usually the synthetic route is more expensive but a lot simpler.

[xkcd-sucks]

So would PCRing a mutation into a gene be synthetic biology, or only if you wrote out the sequence on a computer before buying primers?

[fluidcruft]

I think that statement is a response to Venter's synthetic bacteria.