Are we conveniently assuming that only humans will be able to read and tweak their genomes, and do synthetic biology?

An odd assumption if we’re generously granting FTL or even regular space travel to aliens.

Everything from the lack of radio communication to the commonness of biological precursors like nucleic acids and amino acids in space points to multicellularity being the relatively rare thing, at least in our part of the galaxy.

We don’t hear from them or see them because if they’re out there, they’re still microbes eating each other. That one case of the two forming a symbiotic relationship, which leads to more endosymbiosis… that’s where I suspect our real rareness lies.