Actually... quite possibly. Check out the first slide in [1]. You can basically build genetic logic gates using promoters to conditionally (i.e. depending on the presence of light, a protein, etc.) produce a protein to induce or repress another promoter, thereby increasing or decreasing the expression of another gene.
It's still pretty early stages and there are a lot of factors that make this more complicated (life isn't binary), but the ultimate goal of synthetic biology is to be able to program DNA in the same way you might program a computer.
Actually... quite possibly. Check out the first slide in [1]. You can basically build genetic logic gates using promoters to conditionally (i.e. depending on the presence of light, a protein, etc.) produce a protein to induce or repress another promoter, thereby increasing or decreasing the expression of another gene.
It's still pretty early stages and there are a lot of factors that make this more complicated (life isn't binary), but the ultimate goal of synthetic biology is to be able to program DNA in the same way you might program a computer.
[1] http://co.mbine.org/events/COMBINE_2015/agenda?q=system/file...