Just beginning a re-read of a book on DNA and it's discovery, emerging technologies (although somewhat before the CRISPr/CAS9 era admittedly, but still interesting), learning a few things about viral vectors and their construction (a facility I'd rather like to add to the lab, tailor-made replication-deficient virus engineering, basically viruses, of a species chosen for the cell lines one would wish to deliver genes to (when viral vectors are used, a process known as 'transfection'), the physical structure, capsid if present, proteins which allow binding to cell receptors are left intact, but the viral genome is surgically excised using the appropriate enzymes, and the DNA or RNA one wishes to introduce, spliced in, the replication ability of the virus is knocked out, so each single virion can only perform a single cycle of infection, essentially, tailor-made to act as syringes at the nanoscale, for work on transgenic organisms. I can think of quite a few such projects I'd love a crack at....start simple, say, simple psychedelic tryptamines, DMT, found in many plants, transfect the genes to produce it into a non-toxigenic lab workhorse strain of E.coli as used in genetics labs worldwide, or even Saccharhomyces, the same yeast used for brewing and baking, along with an antibiotic resistance gene and ideally, fluorescent reporter gene to allow culling the portion of a cell line not stably expressing the desired genes, by introducing the antibiotic the resistance gene allows survival of, which then wipes out the non-engineered, non-desired population, test for fluorescence to double-check, and of course, using antibiotics to which infectious pathogens are now commonly resistant to anyway, or long, long abandoned ones, or specialist types, etc. not usable or used in humans due to toxicity, then grow a colony of DMT-producing E.coli and just acid-base extract it from filtered fermentation tank broth.
Then more ambitious projects, like the genes coding for the assembly of the phenanthrene alkaloids from poppies, morphine, thebaine, oripavine which are of most synthetic use, and more complex still, ergot alkaloids in a stable expression system rather than working with the fiddly, uppity, capricious little wee bastards that are ergot fungi themselves (and they really, REALLY are that), that provide LSD precursors.
Not to mention research into novel antibiotics and such other good causes.
