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TEL AVIV—Technology is a democratizing force, but a digital start-up here in Israel is taking democracy to a new limit; in the words of its founder, it is “democratizing creation.”

Genome Compiler is, as the name suggests, a compiler for genetic material. It allows a user to design bespoke DNA which can then be used to create new organisms. Or put it another way, you can create life.

Genome compiler works on the parallel with an ordinary compiler. A compiler takes a higher level code and turns it into something that is executable. The difference is that in computers the output is binary codes (1s and 0s) and it runs on a computer: with living organisms it is genetic code (the four nucleotide bases G, A, T, and C) and it runs in a cell.

“Every living thing is just an app,” says Omri Amirav-Drory, founder and CEO. “We can program cells because they are just another form of information technology.”

“There are two basic technologies in this field of synthetic biology,” he said. “The ability to read DNA, or...