Bacterial aromatic polyketides are pharmacologically important natural products. A critical parameter that dictates product structure is the carbon chain length of the polyketide backbone. Systematic manipulation of polyketide chain length represents a major unmet challenge in natural product biosynthesis. Polyketide chain elongation is catalyzed by a heterodimeric ketosynthase. In contrast to homodimeric ketosynthases found in fatty acid synthases, the active site cysteine is absent from the one subunit of this heterodimer. The precise role of this catalytically silent subunit has been debated over the past decade. We demonstrate here that this subunit is the primary determinant of polyketide chain length, thereby validating its designation as chain length factor. Using structure-based mutagenesis, we identified key residues in the chain length factor that could be manipulated to convert an octaketide synthase into a decaketide synthase and vice versa. These results should lead to novel strategies for the engineered biosynthesis of hitherto unidentified polyketide scaffolds.