Oh boy, I took this photo the other night in response to lil's bookshelf challenge, but my desk was too uninteresting to actually be worth posting about: I'd say my interests largely gravitate around systems and synthetic biology, though I think the definitions that are used for these two fields are often too limited (to the single-cell level). And realistically, you can't fully understand either without also understanding micro/cell/molecular bio-logy/chemistry/physics. I want to figure out how all the many moving parts, the cogs and motors of organisms play together to make them the dynamic, adaptable, and robust creatures that we know and call "life". And alongside that, I'd like to learn the basic principles of reconstructing autonomous new biological agents. Nowadays, synthetic biology usually refers to control of single cells, through added plasmids / minor modifications to the chromosomes. But it's fun to dream about longer term applications, when you can identify each and every niche of a biome and generate an organism to fit into it accordingly: using this to reconstruct an ecology, to repopulate your gut, to survey your body for pre-programmed genetic defects. There's a massive amount of pie-in-the-sky dreaming that goes along with imaging the possibilities of manipulating biology. But elements of the big ideas have been brewing in labs since the '60s; recombinant DNA has completely revolutionized microbiology. But now we are beginning to distance ourselves from copy-pasting natural DNA and are slowly moving towards making synthetic genes: tweaking a protein's structure and function, up or down-regulating its expression, and turning them into transducers of signal from light into a chemical form. As scientists begin to explore new mechanisms of regulation, these tools give them the ability to determine the minimal components necessary to produce some effect. And while way of understanding biology is far from new, the tools for manipulating systems, screening millions of changes, and actually seeing those changes are only just beginning to mature (See also: Pribnow's comment) There is still a lot to understand within the systems of single-cells: What mysteries remain in the genome? How do proteins' structure give them function? What is expressed where and when? How do these systems impart on the cells their morphology, their mechanical strength, their interactive behavior? But as we begin to gain insight into these questions, we can then feed that knowledge back into reprogramming those cells. I don't know if most of this will happen in the next decade. The most general problems probably won't be solved within my lifetime. But it's fascinating to see projects begin to take off by manipulating a subset of a cell's system. Metabolic engineering is already proving its value to the chemical engineering world (Who needs a total synthesis of LSD once you've cloned the genes from ergot into yeast? See also: opiates, nitrogen fixation, anti-malarial drugs )