It's pretty cool to see Synthetic Biology getting coverage on HN. One of the really interesting ideas that scientists are starting to grab a hold of is that of "biological parts". People have started compiling these biological circuit elements and figuring out how they work when exposed to different stimuli [1]. The ultimate aim is to standardize the usage of these parts so that you could design an organism in your browser, figure out whether it will work or not (based on a super-secret algorithm), and get the resulting functional organism shipped to your lab bench in a couple of days. As a reference, right now it can take up to 2 months to even create an initial DNA product with traditional methods. From there, it could take months to get your organism working correctly. New DNA synthesis techniques will dramatically speed up some of the initial steps (something Teselagen has done).
An addition to the article I'd make is that Teselagen is actually letting people leverage new DNA synthesis techniques produced by a couple of groups (the Venter institute is one) to design better biological circuits (as in faster, better, stronger). If you are interested in reading about how scientists have begun to overcome some of the many barriers to biological circuit design, there's a good intro to advances in DNA synthesis techniques here: http://j5.jbei.org/j5manual/pages/1.html
[1] partsregistry.org