1. Biology: from analysis to synthesis

Synthetic biology—the creation of new living systems by design—is a rapidly growing area of science and technology that is attracting attention well beyond the laboratory and is provoking vigorous public debate. ‘Biology: from analysis to synthesis’ explains that the most general definition of synthetic biology works by dividing biology as a whole into analytic and synthetic branches. Synthetic biology is a broad subject partly because of the way it is defined, and partly because it has two distinct and independent historical roots: one intellectually driven and running deep into 19th-century natural philosophy, and the other more practically orientated and emerging from late 20th-century biotechnology.