But it's worth remembering that Genencor has delivered solid revenues and profits for years.
The U.S. Department of Energy contracted with two enzyme companies, Genencor and Novozymes, to try to reduce the cost of cellulose-dismantling enzymes.
Genencor's Jack Huttner, who runs the company's biorefinery business, says the cost must come down by another factor of one or two.
In 1995 DuPont and Genencor began using sophisticated gene chips that let them study RNA activity inside the nucleus of E. coli bacteria.
"We're at a point in time where the industrial biotech sector can really take off, " says Karl Sanford, a vice president at Genencor in Palo Alto, Calif.
He ran Genencor --which produces a variety of mostly industrial enzymes--from late 2002 until it was bought by Danish food ingredient group Danisco in February this year.
But Genencor won't start working on that until there's demand.
After seven years Genencor and DuPont scientists narrowed the relevant reactions to 80 and ended up genetically altering 20 of them and adding 10 new genes to enhance E. coli's digestive productivity.
The companies are a bit cagey about the details, but according to Robert Dorsch, who works on the DuPont side of things, and Ray Chandra, of Genencor, the technology involves inserting four genes taken from various species of bacteria and yeast into industrial strains of E. coli.
One worry is that the new science of synthetic biology, the souped-up form of genetic engineering that involves radically modifying organisms or even someday designing them from scratch, is both more promising and more dangerous that the technology that has been around for two decades and gave birth to Amgen, Genencor, and Monsanto.
One worry is that the new science of synthetic biology, the souped-up form of genetic engineering that involves radically modifying organisms or even someday designing them from scratch, is both more promising and more dangerous that the technology that has been around for two decades and gave birth to Amgen (nasdaq: AMGN - news - people ), Genencor, and Monsanto (nyse: MON - news - people ).
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