Researchers engineer an artemisinin precursor pathway in E. coli.

2004: First international conference for synthetic biology, Synthetic Biology 1.0 (SB1.0) is held at MIT.

2005: Researchers develop a light-sensing circuit in E. coli. Another group designs circuits capable of multicellular pattern formation.

2006: Researchers engineer a synthetic circuit that promotes bacterial invasion of tumour cells.

2010: Researchers publish in Science the first synthetic bacterial genome, called