"We're trying to create a whole new industry, " says John Danner, the chief executive of Codon.
Codon claims it will have more production capacity by year-end than all of its competitors combined.
"This is basically the next step in synthetic biology, " says Brian Baynes, Codon's chief scientific officer.
This summer Codon enlisted Craig Muir, the roboticist who industrialized gene-finding at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, to help build its factory in Cambridge.
Codon's founders brought with them new ways to catch errors in DNA synthesis, allowing them to produce much larger strings of base pairs.
Endy, along with three synthetic-biology comrades, started a company called Codon Devices in Cambridge, Mass. in late 2004 to industrialize the construction of genes.
Codon intends to use all this high-speed capacity to go after a future market in complicated biotech devices that use three or more BioBricks.
FORBES: Drew Endy aims to reinvent the biotechnology industry.
Endy, along with three synthetic-biology comrades, started a company called Codon Devices in Cambridge, Massachusetts in late 2004 to industrialize the construction of genes.
FORBES: Drew Endy aims to reinvent the biotechnology industry.
The new firm, Codon Devices , is aiming to perfect a new technology that would allow scientists to edit sequences of DNA with never-before-seen ease.
Codon recently shipped the biggest piece of DNA ever made, a hunk of 35, 000 base pairs, big enough to hold ten genes, to Cambridge biotech Microbia.
Of the 64 possible codons, 61 correspond to particular amino acids though several amino acids have more than one codon, since natural proteins consist of only 20 sorts of amino acid.
ECONOMIST: Chemists are trying to synthesise new varieties of life
The result was a version of Ras that sported the new amino acid at the appropriate position, proving that the invented codon, artificial base and all, had been recognised and used.
ECONOMIST: Chemists are trying to synthesise new varieties of life
This summer Codon enlisted Craig Muir, the roboticist who industrialized gene-finding at Millennium Pharmaceuticals (nasdaq: MLNM - news - people ), to help build its factory in Cambridge.
FORBES: Drew Endy aims to reinvent the biotechnology industry.
Initially Codon's goal is to dominate the gene-synthesis market.
Codon was founded a year ago on the idea that scientists would need a company that could sell tools used in creating such custom-designed biological systems (see: " Photoshop For DNA").
"I don't think I've ever seen that level of leadership in a young person, " says Harvard genetics professor George Church, who helped start the Human Genome Project and is another of Codon's founders.
FORBES: Drew Endy aims to reinvent the biotechnology industry.
Codon Chief Danner and John Mulligan, the founder of Blue Heron, have started an industry trade organization that will prevent misuse by flagging potentially dangerous gene sequences and doing checks on researchers who request DNA transcripts.
Codon is aiming to become the leading player in a new field called "synthetic biology, " creating tools by which cells and their genetic material can be more precisely engineered in order to create new medicines and industry.
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