I find the claim to be a bit hoax-y and I’m still holding out on it, but there is one excerpt that caught my eye. Article here.

M mycoides was chosen as a simple microbe with which to develop and prove the technology. It has no immediate application.

But scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute and Synthetic Genomics, the company funding their research, intend to move quickly on to more useful targets that may not exist in nature.

They are particularly interested in designing algae that can capture carbon dioxide from the air and produce hydrocarbon fuels.

Many of you may have heard my crack-brain idea of how we can start Total Human Genocide. If not, it’s that we bio-engineer algae to absorb oxygen and emit carbon monoxide. So kind of the opposite of what they want to do, but within reason of their theories. We are getting close my friends.