===== Engineering Flair =====

**Engineering flair** refers to the creative and technically complex design of synthetic biological systems that emphasize novelty and structure, often without sufficient attention to biological relevance or therapeutic value.

==== Characteristics ====
  * Use of modular protein domains, fusion constructs, and multicomponent systems
  * Prioritization of elegance or innovation over practicality
  * Lack of disease relevance, clinical scalability, or translational need

==== Critical Usage ====
Often used pejoratively to highlight studies that overengineer a system for academic appeal rather than solving a real problem.

==== Example ====
An extracellular vesicle engineered with five synthetic tags and viral fusion proteins may display engineering flair, but is not inherently meaningful unless it improves therapeutic delivery in a clinically relevant model.