From the windows of Ginkgo Bioworks’ Boston offices you can peer down into a grimy vestige of the city’s past. Across the street, workers in yellow-slicker overalls scrub, scrape, and repair the decks of worn-out warships and ocean tankers parked in a drydock. During World War II, 50,000 people worked the docks and the eight-story waterside warehouse that Ginkgo now calls home.

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