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Mother Nature has always been life's master architect, working off genetic blueprints that are fine-tuned from one generation to the next.
Until now.
Scientists increasingly are designing life from scratch, using inexpensive, fast and accurate tools to create and assemble strands of DNA like tinkertoys -- and instructing cells to do things that nature never imagined.
In industrial clusters in the Bay Area, La Jolla and Boston, the competitive gene-building field is doing for biology what Johannes Gutenberg did for printing -- turning what was once a laborious and uneven artisan effort into affordable and accurate mass production. With the potential to create an industry that could lead to products worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the fast-moving field is not only prompting investor funding but also sparking calls for oversight.
The goal is to build improved medicines, better biofuels and new chemicals -- and perhaps someday splice new genes into sick people, fixing inherited diseases. But the cutting-edge technique also could be used to build dangerous pathogens for warfare.
"We're accelerating genetics," said biochemist Emily Leproust, cofounder...