Dear Perez,

It may be simply explained as following. 

Genetic Engineering is the manipulation of gene(s) within a living organism for its improved performance towards a specific objective. However, synthetic biology purely focus on the developing living life/ cell/ organelle from the nonliving entities.  

For synthetic biology, you can go through few papers of Craig Venter or Rasmussen.

Prabodh

Synthetic biology allow research for the redesign of existing natural biological systems for enzyme production, medicine or some other useful commodity. While Genetic Enginneirng allow research using molecular biology concept. Moreover, genetic engineeirng is a tool for synthetic biology

@ Mahendra Kumar .Yes i agree with you genetic engineering is a tool for synthetic biology,but my question was that :  if the use  of new tools like for exameple standards was essential for it to be synthetic biology.  The element that distinguishes synthetic biology from traditional molecular and cellular biology is the focus on the design and construction of core components (parts of enzymes, genetic circuits, metabolic pathways, etc.) that can be modeled, understood, and tuned to meet specific performance criteria, and the assembly of these smaller parts and devices into larger integrated systems to solve specific problems. (http://www.synberc.org/what-is-synbio) 

This can only be done by working with standards... and that is the main idea of synbio, making it more like engineering and easier .  So what i understand from what i read and learned from the igem competetition is that if  you don't use standards it would be just genetic engineering, because you are using traditional molecular biology.  A key component of the igem competition is the biobrick ; wich is a standard biological component. But if we dont use this biobrick we would only be doing a genetic engineering project and not a synthetic biology project. 

Ha its kinda of complicated and that is why i asked. There are alot of different definitions of synbio even from leading experts and im just trying to understand a bit more :) but thank you i appreciate all comments!

I view it largely as a marketing term intended to appeal to novice investors with a computer tech background.  20 years ago the same thing was called biotechnology.  True, there was some progress since then, like the larger scale adoption of de-novo gene synthesis.  Nowhere near enough to justify re-naming the whole field if you ask me.  But dumb money pays well, so my hat is off to the folks who came up with it... 

Here's a good paper about Synthetic Biology:

"Synthetic Biology: Applications Come of Age".

Hi there.

the way i understand it is that genetic engineering means the manipulation of already availale material within an organism, whereas synthetic biology means using biological moleculesand  applying novel techniques in order to put them together and produce a functional result.

I hope that i contributed.

Best wishes,

Nikos

I think you can interpretate this both ways if you select the correct words. Select the one that is in your favor. I personally don't really see a huge difference, so I was on a synbio grant comission and recieved a good project that would involve genetic engineering, I would probably give it a green light. 

Maths! :P

If not a huge difference, there is a difference.

Genetic engineering is manipulating only using genetic/recombinant technology. However, synthetic biology is production of novel biological and biocompatible materials applying also non- genetic technology.

Of course, Genetic engineering is a part of synthetic Biology.

Hello Uriel

As pointed out by Chandra genetic engineering is a part of synthetic biology

Synthetic biology comes from the notion that "If we can read the DNA sequence (due to the abundant sequence data in a readable format, collected from numerous sequencing platforms) we might as well write it (DNA sequence can now be synthesized you need not always go to biological system to extract your DNA)"

And that is how you get unnatural DNA sequences with unique characteristics

Now if you have many such DNA sequences you can probably put it together in different combinations in a modular fashion to get a synthetic system that is doing or performing a particular function of interest. That's how bioengineering has emerged (like a computer engineer would build a computer using modular parts like resistors and capacitors)

Of course while doing all these permutation and combination you need a sound knowledge of molecular biology

I go along pretty much with John Schloendorn's view that the concentration on titles and definitions has more to do with marketing, both to investors and to funding agencies than with the practicalities of scientific research. Most of us in the biomedical field are interested in bending the imperfections of nature, as manifest in disease processes, to our will and are more concerned with this objective than with the specifics of the technologies involved.  A survey of our attempts to treat disease with single technology approaches, such as 'gene therapy'  and more recently 'stem cell therapy', must be aware that the barriers that they are running into are most likely to be dealt with by multidisciplinary solutions and that drawing arbitrary boundaries between these disciplines carries little value except as a marketing tool.

Synthetic Biology is Extreme Genetic Engineering.. 

Synthetic Biology is rational design of genetic circuits by using modelling, analysis and Computer science 

genetic engineering is a top-down approach, retro-fitting the metabolism of a cell (existing), while synthetic biology is a bottom-up approach, reconstruction of a new synthetic cell (novel)

Dear all,

To get insight of Synthetic Biology.You can go through this mini review Published in Hypothesis Journal. I am also attaching the PDF file here. 

http://www.hypothesisjournal.com/?p=2675

The term "Synthetic biology" refers to the methods of making and using of predominantly synthesized molecules (DNA sequences, microRNAs, proteins); "Genetic engineering" - a toolbox for genetic modification of existing living organisms; "Engineering biology" - the hypothetical set of methods for designing and developing on-demind of a previously non-existing organisms or their "–omics" circuits.

Article Foundations for Engineering Biology

The main difference between synbio and GE is if we take GE when a jelly fish flourescent gene is added to the cat and it glows here the cat is not considered as the complete new species but if we take synbio GE is just one of the tool of the synbio here we can Engineer an organism like we did in cat or completely create a new biological system which has been cut from the branch of natural evolution tree and is considered as a new species. As you said yes synbio involes various fields it's more like a subject involving various branches of science.

suggest you this YouTube channel, that daily answer these question:

https://youtube.com/c/BioDataTechnology

wish it will be useful .