A microbe discovered living on the slopes of an Italian volcano can eat and store CO2 in its body faster than any other species known to date. Scientists hope to be able to use the creature's abilities to create carbon capture tanks to help pull CO2 out of the atmosphere. Although reducing CO2 released by fossil fuels into the atmosphere is still important, many scientists now predict that the predicted effects of climate change will occur regardless of the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere; as such, the removal of this CO2 assumes equal importance. Near the Sicilian city of Palermo, the island of Vulcano was host to a microbe that ate CO2 "surprisingly fast" and sinks into the water. Sinking is unique because it would allow machines to collect CO2 that microbes have absorbed, meaning that carbon capture tanks would not have to act like landfills; They could be replenished over and over again. "The project takes advantage of 3.6 billion years of microbial evolution," he told The Guardian Dr. Braden Tierney of Weill Cornell Medical College. “The nice thing about microbes is that they are self-assembling machines. You don't have that with a lot of chemical approaches [to capturing CO2]."