(CNN) -- Look miles into the future and imagine a day, when geneticists can design a flawless set of human genes in a laboratory. That future vision may never arrive, but it has taken a step closer.

Scientists routinely seek to reprogram bacteria to produce proteins for drugs, biofuels and more, but they have struggled to get those bugs to follow orders. But a hidden feature of the genetic code, ...

In May of 2018, I visited the Boston offices of Ginkgo Bioworks, a company in the burgeoning field of synthetic biology—the science of designing and engineering biological entities. Ginkgo is the ...

The combination of genetic knowledge with reproductive technology already allows parents to select some of the genes they pass to their children. Someday it may even enable the creation of human genes ...

Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution, by British author Brian Stableford (Dark Ararat), includes 11 recent short stories that explore issues raised by biotechnology. In his introduction, ...