At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I don't get what differentiates the (new) "synthetic biology" from the (old) "genetic engineering". They seem like th

At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I don't get what differentiates the (new) "synthetic biology" from the (old) "genetic engineering". They seem like the exact same thing to me (I'm open to be convinced otherwise though). The only difference I can find is that one term has been pilloried by the green movement, while the other has (for reasons not quite clear to me) escaped most of that negative attention. People have been talking about all of these genetic engineering fantasies for my entire lifetime. The technology is still not there to put all the pieces together "like Legos" as the arcticle seems to suggest. I am happy to see that this stuff is getting people interested in science, and biology in particular. But this article makes it sound like you could just go order a bunch of DNA and make yourself a little bacterium that does whatever you want. We're still a bit far from those days.