Fungus Could Fuel Cars

A researcher at Montana State University has found a micro-organism in a plant in South America that could replace fuel in vehicles one day. The unusual fungus contains the essence of diesel, which one could use to run a bus, for example, without processing it at all. Professor Gary Strobel discusses his findings on "myco-diesel," which are being published Wednesday in The Journal of Microbiology in London. Dr. Strobel made the discovery by chance, while collecting fungus from the stem of a tree in an old forest in southern Chile. When he finally got around to sending it off for sophisticated analysis — years later — he discovered that this version of Gliocladium was unlike others he'd encountered before. "I've scoured the earth for not only organisms like Gliocladium, but many other endophytes [a plant that lives in the tissue of another plant]. I've been to almost every rainforest on the planet," he tells Alex Chadwick. But, "in over 50 years, I've never seen anything like that." Why would a fungus create diesel? Essentially to protect from plant invaders, he says.

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