Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, said the company might offer refunds to unhappy customers.

When the Internet company that Karen Kelly worked for was sold and her job disappeared, she set out to become a freelance writer in New York City.

As Jason Kelly, the co-founder of a gene-synthesis firm called Ginkgo BioWorks, observes, there is no equivalent of an electrical engineer's diagram to help unravel what is going on in a cell.