Yeah I was kind of thinking how errors in promoters could be thought of like issues in the g-code (the programming language that 3D printers, laser cutters, etc. use) leading to certain layers not being printed and stuff like that.

Of course one aspect where this metaphor really breaks down is the time it takes to 3D print something versus a protein to fold into shape; the former takes anywhere from minutes to hours (depending on the size of the print, resolution, etc.), whereas the latter somehow occurs in just fractions of a second (and the mechanics of exactly how it happens so fast is still not entirely clear, which is why we still don’t really have accurate computer models of protein folding, and the field of protein engineering is still fairly nascent. Once we do have a better understanding, synthetic biology will enter a new age in which it will become not only possible to use tools like CRISPR Cas9 to edit genomes by inserting or removing pre-existing genes like we do now, but actually build entirely new genes from scratch, for novel proteins that have never existed in nature. We’ll basically have the most powerful pre-existing system for nano-engineering right at our fingertips).