Synthetic biology is a new and evolving field with many definitions. A broad definition can be found on Wikipedia:

“Synthetic biology is a multidisciplinary field of science that focuses on living systems and organisms, and it applies engineering principles to develop new biological parts, devices, and systems or to redesign existing systems found in nature”

This is a definition that fits my research approach: I make use of molecular evolution and natural variation to gain structural and functional insight of proteins involved in signal transduction pathways important for inflammation.

I also utilize cross-kingdom (from bacteria, fungi and plants) biological modules (proteins, protein domains) in mammalian cells to engineer signaling pathways that can be used as biosensors for small molecules (secondary metabolites), and other alien modules to manipulate those secondary metabolites for characterization of their role in inflammation.