Who are the pioneers of synthetic biology, and what contribution did they make?

• The roots of synthetic biology can be traced to a landmark publication by Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod in 1961.Insights from their study of the lac operon(biological :"on-off" switch) in E.coli led them to postulate the existence of regulatory circuits or molecular networks for cellular regulation.
• Monod and Jacob observed that the living cell controls its manufacture of proteins through a feedback mechanism analogous to a toggle switch in the presence or absence of a substrate.The discovery that enzyme synthesis was under tight regulatory control earned Jacob, Lwoff and Monod the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965.

References:

Monod, J. & Jacob, F. Teleonomic mechanisms in cellular metabolism, growth, and differentiation. Cold Spring Harb. Symp. Quant. Biol. 26, 389–401 (1961).