Biological Engineering: designing life

SCIENCE

Illustration I made for this article

What does the laptop or smartphone you are reading this on have in common with bacteria? Well, at first glance one would say nothing, that life is a miracle, that it is ridiculous to compare them — burn them! — But the truth is that as we get a better and better understanding of the mechanisms that govern the deepest aspects of living beings [of the cell], we see more and more the…