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One thing certain about nature - it sure isn't efficient. Just take a look at the human male reproductive system and you get the idea that if it was designed, it was designed by fish, and on a dare. It is a problem waiting to happen, but evolution is about the survival of the fitter, not the fittest - and then we add in some random walks and mutations. 

None of those could be termed the most efficient. But synthetic biology can fix that. Synthetic biologists design and build workhorse organisms that can make things more efficiently than nature itself. Obviously the real promise is in drugs, but it is also already being shown in food. 

Evolva is a Swiss synthetic biology and they developed a synthetic biology vanilla that is an alternative to artificial vanilla. Everyone hates artificial these days, right? Well, a whole lot of Whole Foods shoppers hate science more, so Evolva might not like getting some free publicity from Science 2.0. Someone could read this and invent an "allergy" to their vanilla, even though they don't even know which foods have it, and then National Resources Defense Council will put out a press release and their fellow Manhattan-ites at the New York Times will rewrite it and pretty soon someone is testifying before Congress.

But don't worry about all that just yet. And don't worry about Frankenvilla being grown in fields near you and ruining your free-range, organic (wink wink) vanilla - synthetic biology doesn't grow in fields, it is created in the lab. And it is the future of genetic optimization.

Article: GMOs Are Old Hat. Synthetically Modified Food Is The New Frontier by Eliza Barclay, NPR blogs.

H/T Genetic Literacy Project