Evaluating the potential threat posed by advances in biotechnology, especially genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and synthetic biology remains a contentious issue. The rapid development of the tools of molecular biology and metabolic engineering has enabled the development of chimeric organisms which possess characteristics which are not native to the wild variant. This is commonplace in the area of biomanufacturing, where genes are introduced into organisms such as E coli and products manufactured via large-scale fermentation. More recently, entire metabolic pathways, albeit of limited...