Maybe I'm misunderstanding your frustration, but we can already produce many fully functional proteins (often in non-human cells) from their genes. It would be

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your frustration, but we can already produce many fully functional proteins (often in non-human cells) from their genes. It would be a magnificent feat to be able to know and produce an entire organism (familiar, not novel) from the letters on the page. Arguably, that's an important step to being able to do the kinds of designer genetics that people seem to be very interested in for making sure their kids are born without certain disease alleles.