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Synthetic biology aims to redesign and reconstruct living systemsfor understanding life orfor useful real-world applications.In the past two decades,scientists have been able to use engineered livingsystems to produce many kinds ofproductsfrom bioplastics to drugs,to construct a minimal bacterium with afully synthetic genome and to store huge amount of information within a celI.And in 2020,when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world,the synthetic biology community became one of the majorforces to develop effective diagnostic approaches as well as the drugs and vaccines,to rapidly cope with this great challenge with the state-of-the-art technologies in their hands.In this panel discussion held on 3rd August 2020,eleven pioneering synthetic biologistsfrom six countries acrossfour continents gathered to discuss the development trend,challenges and biosafety issues concerning synthetic biology.