Open Questions: Synthetic Biology

Five hard truths for synthetic biology: January 2010 news feature from Nature News. "Can engineering approaches tame the complexity of living systems? Roberta Kwok explores five challenges for the field and how they might be resolved."
Second Genesis: Life, but not as we know it: March 2009 New Scientist article about synthetic biology ( Making new life) and the possibility of a "shadow biosphere" of life forms unlike any currently recognized ( The search for shadow life).
In the Business of Synthetic Life: April 2005 Scientific American Insights article, subtitled "Synthetic biology might someday lead to artificial organisms. To James J. Collins, it already offers pharmaceutical promise, like turning a person's cells into custom drug factories."