Andrew (Drew) David Endy (born 1970) is a synthetic biologist and tenured associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, California.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] (wikipedia)
The scope of material I can work with is not limited to the set of things that we inherit from nature.
Biological engineering is not necessarily understanding systems but rather, I want to be able to design and build biological systems to perform particular applications.
If you can write DNA, you're no longer limited to 'what is' but to what you could make.
We haven't been able to transform it into a discipline where you can simply and predictably engineer biological systems. It means the complexity of things we can make and can afford to make are quite limited.
They aren't going to put Kodak out of business any time soon,