I'm in the same boat as highwaystar on this. I just finished high school and am going into Aerospace Engineering at Auburn University, but I am a huge fan of biology. Now that I just finished AP Biology, most of my information comes from a science journal called Nature. My dad has a PHD in Microbiology and is currently doing research to cure sickle cell, and he is a huge biology fan so I read the journal after he finishes with it. I heard about the synthetic cell on their website. My dad knew about this for weeks before but just failed to tell me until I already figured it out. It is a stepping stone to a new age in genomics.

Actually this opens up a whole new field in genetics engineering. Previous to having a whole synthetic cell, the study of different mutation effects and study of genomic libraries, studies had to be done with use of generic bacteria like E.Coli, B.Subtilis, H.Influenza or with the use of genetically modified Yeasts (S.Cervisiae) using phages as vector mediums.

With this new technology, the entire synthetic DNA can be manipulated to provide the same yield of effects. We're talking about a whole chromossome that was man-made. That's literally millions of nucleotides arranged in a fashion that provides functionality for hundreds of genes and that can express the necessary building blocks (amino-acids and glucose-degrading enzymes) for that cell to grow. Now, with the advent of this technology, scientist can express the mutations and the study of different gene combinations on the chromossome itself.