Mutual self-interest provides a strong basis for transatlantic cooperation in biotechnology based on shared recognition of its vast potential to provide solutions to some of civilization’s most pressing problems. Thanks to explosive advances in our understanding of the many ways in which promiscuous nature has been manipulating DNA and RNA for the past billion years, it is widely anticipated that the 21st century will belong to biology.1 We are now at the point where our ability to innovate is constrained less by technical capability than by the limits of our imaginations. Multiple laboratories and companies on both sides of the Atlantic (and throughout the world) are pursuing promising applications, and experience confirms progress would be accelerated by cooperative approaches. But there are some considerable challenges, especially in agricultural and industrial contexts.