Genetics detects mine over matter.

It sounds like something from The X-Files or a Saturday Night Live skit -- glowing proteins that not only enhance food but detect land mines. That's one of the ideas behind a Greensboro company called Transgreenix Inc.

Transgreenix was founded by Neal Stewart, a UNC Greensboro professor specializing in plant biotechnology, and Eric Button, a UNCG grad who, at San Diego, Calif.-based Hybritech Inc., helped turn a test for prostate cancer into an international company.

The plan for Transgreenix is to use fluorescent proteins, which glow green under blue light, to mark and identify genetically altered plants. That would enable farmers to skip a two-day DNA-fingerprinting process and tell at a glance if, for example, altered plants were passing genetically enhanced disease resistance to weeds through airborne pollen. Or sentinel plants could be engineered to glow when an early sign of a disease appears, allowing farmers to take corrective action. "Of course, this is all quite futuristic," Stewart says, "but you have to start sometime."

The company's two main research goals are to build a library of genes that light up the proteins only when the desired conditions are present and...