Over the last 20 years, the idea of “designing biology” has gone from science fiction to just science, as the field of synthetic biology has exploded, with applications from therapeutics to manufacturing and more. 

In this episode from January 2019, one of the pioneers in the field, professor James J. Collins of MIT, joins a16z general partner on the Bio + Health fund, Vijay Pande, and editorial partner Hanne Winarsky, to discuss the origins of synthetic biology or "synbio", to what "engineering and designing" biology really looks like in action and the disciplinary differences between how biologists and engineers see the world.