Biotechnology allows to exploit biological systems as sustainable micro factories for the generation of energy and production of valuable organic carbon compounds, such as therapeutics, biofuels and commodity chemicals. However, biological systems are intrinsically noisy, which limits their adoption and scaling-up in industrial setting. Synthetic biology has the potential to engineer these stochastic system and transform them in reliable, efficient and robust bio production platforms. However, new mechanisms to control the biochemical reactions taking place in cells, with particular emphasis on gene expression, need to be developed in order to achieve this goal. Genes expression is most commonly induced by small molecules that activate or repress transcription factors. For this reason, most synthetic genetic circuits are currently controlled by modulating the concentration of inducer molecules. However, this strategy is not very orthogonal to what biological systems use already and not ideal for setting where precise spatio-temporal control is required, as addition of chemicals is not ideal for remote control and automation. Certain biological systems respond to light input via specific photoreceptors that can then activate the expression of specific genes. The exploitation of this interaction between light and molecules led to the development of the field of optogenetics, where specific regions of the electromagnetic spectrum selectively induce or repress the transcription of genes. While this system enables exquisite spatial and reversible control over genetic circuits, it is not particularly suitable to control photosynthetic organisms, where external light applied to induce gene expression interferes with the host photosynthetic apparatus. Interestingly however photosynthetic organisms the ones where industrial adoption is most required to sustainably transform inorganic carbon and sunlight into valuable biomass and bioenergy. There is now interest in using electronic currents to control genetic circuits, analogously to electronic currents controlling synthetic electrical circuits. Shall we call this field electrogenetics ?