Working Backward

This paper discusses role of reverse engineering in biomedical and other bioscience applications. Reverse engineering is one of the most relevant examples of methods that have moved from engineering to find a role in biomedical and other bioscience applications. For an early introduction to the method's use in both biomedical and engineering fields, reverse engineering is commonly taught to biomedical undergraduates. Scientists in the biomedical hybrid fields of systems and synthetic biology call upon reverse engineering in ways that may look foreign to the practicing mechanical or electrical engineer—or even to the practicing biomedical engineer. The paper also highlights that synthetic biology, a new area of research, focuses solely on designing and building new biological systems. Synthetic biology often focuses on ways of taking parts of natural biological systems, characterizing and simplifying them, and using them as components of an engineered, biological system. According to critics, biological circuits can be integrated into organisms to change their interactions or products or, ultimately, to synthesize fundamentally new and possibly hazardous organisms. The new field of study—like all other fields encompassed by biomedical engineering—has seen fit to use reverse engineering as an everyday tool.