A startup in Paris has developed a plant that could take over the work of 30 houseplants — and it’s just the beginning.

Neo P1, effectively a super-efficient air purifier, can metabolize four major indoor air pollutants and absorb certain volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. It’s the start of a revolution in plants that could lead to a dramatic new industry.

“Plant bioengineering is still so much in its infancy that it would be foolish to pretend to know what it could look like in 15 or 20 years,” Neoplants, the company behind the development, tells Interesting Engineering.

“What we did is take one of those plants, Epipremnum aureum aka Pothos and engineer it in two main ways.

We inserted additional genes coding for enzymatic chains that allow the plant to integrate the most harmful VOCs ie. Formaldehyde, Benzene, Toluene and Xylene, in its endogenous carbon metabolism. In other words, we allow the plant to “breath in” these pollutants and use them in a similar way it uses CO2.

We used directed evolution techniques to create strains of beneficial plant bacteria that are extremely efficient at degrading the same VOCs, and that are able to live symbiotically with Neo P1,” [said CEO Lionel Mora and CTO Patrick Torbey].

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