We have a fairly good idea of how life on Earth evolved, whatever the creationists think. But is that the only way it could have possibly worked? The rapidly growing field of synthetic biology is working hard at trying to answer that very question, and to push the envelope of a technology whose ‘only limits…in a sense, were established 3.8 billion years ago when the first one-celled life came into being’. We’re a long way off from creating life from scratch, but the theorists are busy looking at ways we might someday be able to.