Nature DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07289-x"> Credit: David McLeod. Nature DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07289-x

When scientist J. Craig Venter and his team announced in 2010 that they had created the first cell controlled by a fully synthetic genome , it marked a turning point in how scientists think about life.

For the first time, DNA—the molecule that carries the instructions for life—had been written on a computer, assembled in a laboratory and used to control a living cell . The achievement suggested something profound: Life might not only be understood but designed.

A biologist widely recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to genomics, including leading efforts to sequence the first draft of the human genome , Venter and his team's successful creation of the first synthetic bacterial cell is considered pivotal to the field of synthetic biology .

By combining biology and engineering, synthetic biology seeks to design and build new biological systems or redesign existing…