Suppose you were an absolute whiz at genetic engineering, what would you set your sights upon making? Unicorns? Domestic cats with tiger markings? Broccoli that tastes like chocolate? Beer that doesn’t give you a hangover? All sorts of ideas come to mind, but if you really wanted to do something good for the world, and you were happy to play with nice, simple little animals, how about this: bacteria that eat CO2 and shit gasoline.

Of course if you are Michael Crichton you’ll be immediately starting work on a book about how evil, genetically-engineered bacteria escape from a lab and almost destroy the world by eating the entire atmosphere until it turns out that they can be killed by spraying them with underarm deodorant (exact brand to be left to the product placement guys). But for the rest of us, hey, it isn’t such a bad idea, especially if it works.