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Nature 421, 118 (9 January 2003) | doi:10.1038/421118a

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Synthetic biology: Act natural

Steven A. Benner1

Over the past two centuries, organic chemists developed their discipline by purifying natural products from biological systems and determining how they are assembled from their constituent atoms. As their deconstructive powers grew, chemists targeted larger biomolecules, first proteins and nucleic acids, and then supramolecular structures such as the nucleosome and the ribosome.