Figure 1

Potential for danger from synthetic life. Synthetic life forms display different levels of risk, according to whether they use standard terran biochemistry (inside the red circle), and/or are capable of evolving (inside the green circle) and/or are self-sustaining (inside the blue circle). The arrows indicate the direction that current work is taking the indicated example of synthetic biology. Adapted from Benner SA: The Life, the Universe and the Scientific Method. Gainesville: FfAME Press; 2009.