Yes - this is how impossible foods makes the heme protein which is central to their burger tasting "meaty". There are tons of startups working on this for other food products, but it's well established in other industries. Many pharmaceuticals are produced via synthetic biology, for example.
And xanthan gum, another example of this general process (perhaps without the "programming"), has been around since the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthan_gum
