Matthew Loper: Kat Paper review

Kat, I really enjoyed reading your paper. It is obviously well thought out and organized. You seem to be arguing that Professor Arnold’s statement is not valid because the fact that synthetic biology deals with more complex problems is the reason it is a new field all together. You provide a wide sweeping tour of every aspect of synthetic biology, but it is effective because each aspect is used as an argument to show how synthetic biology differs from genetic engineering. These arguments that set synthetic biology apart are standards, abstraction, automated construction, easily manipulated parts,and the integration of inorganic components into biological systems. At first I felt like having arguments as varied and far reaching as these was a bit overwhelming and that maybe you should try to focus on a couple arguments and provide more detailed examples. However, in the end I think you were able to pull it off considering the audience and I don’t think you should change it. The intended audience is probaly your colleagues or classmates in our class and you can safely assume they have at least some further knowledge in most of the areas you mention. They also possess the resources to further investigate any particular area you mention that interests them. All in all, your paper was very good and the only thing I would suggest is adding more detail if you choose to make it longer.