It may look like an innocent green plant, but its name evokes something far closer to a robot or interstellar rocket.
It may look like an innocent green plant, but its name evokes something far closer to a robot or interstellar rocket. Neo Px is a bioengineered plant capable of purifying indoor air at an unprecedented scale, the first in a potentially long line of such super-powered organisms. "It's the equivalent of up to 30 regular houseplants in terms of air purification," said Lionel Mora, co-founder of startup Neoplants. "It will not only capture, but also remove and recycle, some of the most harmful pollutants you can find indoors." Five years ago, the entrepreneur met Patrick Torbey, a genome editing researcher, who dreamed of creating living organisms "with functions." "There were plants around us, and we thought that the most powerful function we could add to them was to purify the air," said Mora, during a tour of a rented greenhouse in Lodi, California, two hours from San Francisco.
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