In California, scientists have created a breakthrough antimalarial drug—baker’s yeast made in a lab that contains the genetic material of the opium poppy. The drug has the potential to save millions of lives—and to ensure drug production that independent of poppy flowers. At MIT, researchers are working on a way for plants to “fix” their own nitrogen, so farmers will no longer need to use artificial fertilizers. And, in the far future, scientists and NASA researchers are looking to create a “digital biological teleporter” to bring to Earth life forms detected on Mars via a sort of biological fax.

What should we worrying about in this moment of tremendous, and potentially cataclysmic, scientific discovery? In advance of the Zócalo/Arizona State University event “How Will Synthetic Biology Change the Way We Live?, we asked experts the following question: Soon we’ll be able to program DNA with the same ease we program computers. What new responsibilities will be imposed on us?

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