If the oceans do not make your heart go pitter-patter, how about engineering a bacteria that eats carbon dioxide -- and thus helps protect the world from overheating -- AND excretes fuel which will allow us to drive our cars and machines, without oil?

CNN: Mars can wait. Oceans can't

At first Kosan set out to be a pure technology outfit, engineering bacteria to randomly produce "libraries" of thousands of new polyketides that could then be sold to big drug firms.

FORBES: Magazine Article

At the college library one day, he read a journal article by the late Jay Bailey , a Caltech chemical engineer who was trying to use genetic engineering to fashion "designer" bacteria to produce drugs, agricultural products and industrial chemicals.

FORBES: Magazine Article