Researchers have developed a new strain of E-coli that eats carbon-dioxide according to a new paper published in Cell online journal. The bacteria usually prefer sugars (glucose), but the lab-created strain could be used to create biofuels with a lower emissions footprint than conventional production methods, Nature explains. The researchers say the work is mostly a proof of concept at this time.

The achievement is a milestone, say scientists, because it drastically alters the inner workings of one of biology’s most popular model organisms. And in the future, CO 2 -eating E. coli could be used to make organic carbon molecules that could be used as biofuels or to produce food. Products made in this way would have lower emissions compared with conventional production methods, and could potentially remove the gas from the air.

“It’s like a metabolic heart transplantation,” says Tobias Erb, a biochemist and synthetic biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany, who wasn’t involved in the study.