The ST2OOL project aims at deeply stydying four of the key engineering pillars of Synthetic Biology. STOOL stands for STandardization, STability, Orthogonality and Open Licence/legal issues. The first approach will consist of a vast range of analytical studies to find out how standard, stable, orthogonal and patentable are several selected Biobrick parts. The second approach will include functional metagenomics: several environmental libraries will be set and screened in E. coli in order to select new biological parts -promoters- not because of their strength but because of their particularly standard, stable or orthogonal behavior. Taken together, the results of our project are expected to contribute to answer this key question: Is life fully engineerable?