By selectively altering key enzymes in bacteria's chemical weapons factories, he hopes to redesign microbes so they are more likely to produce compounds that can fight human disease.

FORBES: A Dirty Business

Soil bacteria and fungi are particularly proficient at producing natural chemical weapons, apparently as part of a subterranean arms race to spew out toxic chemicals to kill rival species.

FORBES: A Dirty Business

Frighteningly lethal and insidiously efficient, these bacteria replicate and mutate prodigiously, turning out variants that elude most of the chemical weapons--antibiotics--that medicine has invented over the past century.

FORBES: Germ Warfare