title: Fast, cheap and somewhat in control.
abstract: Efforts to manipulate living organisms have raised the question of whether engineering principles of hierarchy, abstraction and design can be applied to biological systems. Here, we consider the practical challenges to controlling living organisms that must be surmounted, or at least managed, if synthetic biology and cellular bioengineering are to be productive.
authors.affiliation: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. aparkin@lbl.gov
authors.forename: Adam P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Arkin
authors.forename: Daniel A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Fletcher
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001695:Biology; D001698:Biomedical Engineering; D019295:Computational Biology; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D030781:Organisms, Genetically Modified; D012107:Research Design