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Turns out a lot of the coolest results in synthetic biology have been produced by teams of college students for less than $1500. See the iGEM competition http://2010.igem.org/ (and follow links to older competitions), order some biobricks from New England Biolabs http://www.neb.com/nebecomm/products/productE0546.asp , and check out the tutorials at http://syntheticbiology.org/ It's all open source, too. The price of DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis are both dropping exponentially. It's a lot like the Homebrew Computer Club times in molecular biology right now...

(AC, so I'm not as much a karma whore)

http://diybio.org/ - open source hardware, biology, XMLizing lab protocols, the goods.
http://openwetware.org/
http://biopunk.org/
http://syntheticbiology.org/
http://partsregistry.org/
http://igem.org/ (international genetically engineered machines competition)
http://ponoko.com/
http://shapeways.com/
http://thingiverse.com/
http://instructables.com/
lifeboat foundation (AKA "fearmongers click here")

cat * > /dev/trend-spotting-machine

The researchers explained that the transplantation method is simple in concept, though complicated to execute. First, the proteins were stripped from the M. mycoides LC cells, resulting in naked DNA that can be passed between cells. Then this intact DNA was incubated briefly with M. capricolum cells, soaking in a solution that caused the M. capricolum cells to fuse together. As two of these recipient cells fused, they sometimes encapsulated a donor DNA chromosome.

Lartigue, Carole, Glass, John I., Alperovich, Nina, Pieper, Rembert, Parmar, Prashanth P., Hutchison III, Clyde A., Smith, Hamilton O., and Venter, J. Craig. Genome Transplantation in Bacteria: Changing One Species to Another. 3 August 2007, Vo. 317, Science.

Originally published in Science Express on 28 June 2007
Science 3 August 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5838, pp. 632 - 638
DOI: 10.1126/science.1144622

Genome Transplantation in Bacteria: Changing One Species to Another
Carole Lartigue, John I. Glass,* Nina Alperovich, Rembert Pieper, Prashanth P. Parmar, Clyde A. Hutchison, III, Hamilton O. Smith, J. Craig Venter

As a step toward propagation of synthetic genomes, we completely replaced the genome of a bacterial cell with one from another species by transplanting a whole genome as naked DNA. Intact genomic DNA from Mycoplasma mycoides large colony (LC), virtually free of protein, was transplanted into Mycoplasma capricolum cells by polyethylene glycol-mediated transformation. Cells selected for tetracycline resistance, carried by the M. mycoides LC chromosome, contain the complete donor genome and are free of detectable recipient genomic sequences. These cells that result from genome transplantation are phenotypically identical to the M. mycoides LC donor strain as judged by several criteria.

The J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD 20850, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jglass@jcvi.org

Thanks for your enlightning hint, but i wanted to know what a "BioBrick" normally is:
http://syntheticbiology.org/BioBricks.html
http://openwetware.org/wiki/BioBricks_construction _tutorial

"The Registry of Standard Biological Parts is a collection of parts: sequences of DNA with specific function that can be combined together to implement more complex functions. These parts are called BioBricks."

http://syntheticbiology.org/BioBricks.html

From the FAQ:

Synthetic biology studies how to build artificial biological systems for engineering applications, using many of the same tools and experimental techniques. But the work is fundamentally an engineering application of biological science, rather than an attempt to do more science. The focus is often on ways of taking parts of natural biological systems, characterizing and simplifying them, and using them as a component of a highly unnatural, engineered, biological system.

Neat comic strip by Drew Endy: http://mit.edu/endy/www/scraps/comic/AiSB.vol1.pdf

For those who care: CODA Genomics will quite literally will build you a gene (as in here's the test tube full wet stuff, Dr. DNA) if you give them the amino acid sequence, any sequence at all, from an actual organism or something you just made up. Moreover, they guarantee their stuff is the real deal and will generate protein in whatever organism you want.

Synthetic Biology is emerging as a new discipline to study biology in a different way. A sort of 'ground up' building of biological units.

See previous slashdot discussions of "Open Source Biology And Its Impact on Industry" (slashdot discussion) from 2001, and for how fast costs are falling and skills are spreading "The Pace and Proliferation of Biological Technologies" (slashdot discussion) from 2003.

I am, by the way, posting this from the Synthetic Biology 1.0 Meeting at MIT. Open source is under discussion, as are the risks.

I would ignore moving from medicine to computers right now, for reasons I'm sure other posters will mention in detail.

The next big technological revolution will be synthetic biology, harnessing the power of organic processes in the same fashion that computers harnessed the power of inorganic logic circuits.

Especially if you already have done classes in organic chemistry, human enzyme pathways, and genetics, you have the base to begin to move into this evolving industry. The first large international conference on synthetic biology will occur in June at MIT.