He spent years tediously deducing the rules by which polyketides' enzymes work and how to combine them in new ways.

FORBES: A Dirty Business

There was also the potential for developing better cancer drugs, since polyketides have also been a fertile source of chemotherapy agents.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Some bacteria, it turned out, produce polyketides in an assembly-line fashion in much the same way that General Motors produces cars.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The finding helped solve a long-standing mystery of how soil bacteria could make such antibiotics and other druglike chemicals, called polyketides.

FORBES: A Dirty Business

At first Kosan set out to be a pure technology outfit, engineering bacteria to randomly produce "libraries" of thousands of new polyketides that could then be sold to big drug firms.

FORBES: Magazine Article