Industrial biotechnology, where cells from genetically modified organisms are used to generate industrially useful products, is a phenomenon that will shake up the chemical industry and eventually rock entire economies because biotechnological processes are cheaper than traditional chemistry, have higher yields or produce a cleaner product.

Examples of new products generated with this method include methionine, an amino-acid animal-feed supplement with a market worth $1.4 billion a year; turning glucose into acrylate, a feedstock for the plastics industry; a polymer made from lactic acid that has, in turn, been made from maize-derived glucose; and fermenting cellulose into glucose, and then glucose into ethanol for fuel.