"On a system for engineering genetic machines" - Drew Endy

1. Recombinant DNA
2. PCR
3. Sequencing
4. Synthesis
5. Standardization
6. Abstraction
   

We've got the first three. Four is coming, and that means we need to talk about five and six. When synthesis becomes trivial, the barriers to innovation will be largely informational, dependant on our ability as a community to organize and communicate and work together. The establishment of design standards is essential to innovation because it enables potential innovators to rely on simplifications of existing knowledge and devote the majority of their time to understanding the complexities surrounding their innovation, of the true unknown.

This is the purpose of synthetic biology.