Having harvested and germinated seeds from her hand pollinated plants, Minushika scored those seedlings for presence or absence of the red fleck and white V leaf marks and assayed for a specific genetic precursor and enzyme need for the production of hydrogen cyanide.
Codexis's technology works with pharmaceutical precision indeed, one of its main commercial products is the enzyme system for making the chemical precursor to Lipitor, a cholesterol-lowering drug that is marketed by Pfizer.
To be specific, Merck (MRK) will test a beta-amyloid precursor protein site-cleaving enzyme, or BACE, inhibitor, which the drugmaker notes is the first drug with this type of mechanism to advance to this stage of clinical research.