Getty Images Synthetic biology, also called synbio, is a growing area of science that could impact everything from what we eat to how we treat diseases. Many companies and research centers within Ireland are making a serious investment in synbio. Gene therapy is just one of the many applications of synbio. Synthetic biology, or synbio, is based on the idea that living cells can be engineered in a certain way — and it has potential applications in a vast number of areas, including health, packaging, and food. Chantelle Kiernan, a senior scientific advisor for innovation at IDA Ireland, the country's development agency, says that synbio has a number of different use cases. "In its purest form, what everyone's aspiring to is to be able to take that [genetic] code that's available, but in nature, and pick and play from it and develop an entirely new code that gives us something completely new and entirely different," she adds.