As Jason Kelly, the co-founderofa gene-synthesis firm called Ginkgo BioWorks, observes, there is no equivalent of an electricalengineer's diagram to help unravel what is going on in a cell.
"It is too early to offshore a new industry before it is born, " says Andrew Grove, an Intel Corp. founder and one of the first to fund stem-cell study despite the feds' ban.
The scientist, who shares this year's Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for describing how one cell divides into two, had given his founder's stock to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where he has been director since 1997.