That said, I think that the most impressive part of this impressive paper is the area where we have the fewest molecular biology tools: the synthesis of the polysaccharide side chains. Assembling the peptide part was clearly no springtime stroll (and if you read the paper, you find that they experienced the heartbreak of having to go back and redesign things when the initial assembly sequence failed). But polyglycan chemistry has been a long-standing problem (and one that Danishefsky himself has been addressing for years). I think that chemical synthesis really has a much better shot at being the method of choice there. And that should tell you what state the field is in, because synthesis of those things can be beastly. If someone manages to tame the enzymatic machinery that produces them, that'll be great, but for now, we have to make these things the organic chemistry way when we dare to make them at all.
Erythropoetin From Scratch. In the Pipeline:
I DONT MISS IT