Synthetic Biology aims to engineer artificial pathways in cells both to test fundamental notions of how complex biological networks function and to develop new technologies for the treatment of disease.  Moving beyond advances in the last century for the synthetic manipulation of biomolecules in vitro, my laboratory is creating conceptually new approaches for the modification of biomolecules in a living cell.  As opposed to designing molecules that can be added to the cell with minimal perturbation of its natural functions, our approach is to design molecules capable of co-opting the cell’s own highly evolved and integrated synthetic machinery (evolution and translation) for production of the modified biomolecules in vivo.  Finally, we are using these new synthetic methods to develop tools for live cell imaging.