As part of its CBD Technical Series, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) published a 118-page document on synthetic biology in 2015. At its fourteenth meeting in November 2018, the Conference of the Parties to the CBD requested the Executive Secretary to update the document for consideration by the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice, based on the peer review of scientific information and other relevant information. Accordingly, the Secretariat updated the document. The draft is available for peer review from 3 May to 15 June 2021. Parties and observers are invited to participate in the peer review process. The draft is available at https://bch.cbd.int/synbio/peer_review. Contact [email protected] for more information. The 2015 publication is available at https://www.cbd.int/doc/publications/cbd-ts-82-en.pdf.