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Andrew Ellington, Fraser Professor of Biochemistry at UT Austin, has recently published an opinion piece in The Scientist concerning garage biology, synthetic biology, hype and regulation. His main points seem to be: Synthetic biology is nonsense and nothing but a hype, a fantasy Garage biology is nonsense and nothing but a hype, a fantasy The analogy of early computer garage innovation and early biotech garage innovation is nonsense and nothing but a hype, a fantasy. Ellington and his fellow students considered it 30 years ago. They found it impractical then, therefore it's nonsense for all eternity. All this hype and nonsense is threatening the work of real scientists by making authorities go into a panicked regulation frenzy I do agree that there's a lot of hype and fantasizing going on, and I'm not sure I'm buying into the whole BioBricks-approach to biological engineering. And yes, BioBricks-style synthetic biology may turn out to be biology's Artificia