Diesel Fuel From a Tree Fungus?

Petroleum geologists normally look for oil underground. Gary Strobel made his strike by pruning a tree. In the current issue of Microbiology, Strobel, a plant pathologist at Montana State University, Bozeman, and colleagues report that **Gliocladium roseum** - **a novel fungus** they discovered hidden within a stem from a scraggly tree in northern Patagonia - produces dozens of the same midlength hydrocarbons found in **gasoline**, **diesel fuel**, and **jet fuel**. The fungus may help companies convert the chemical energy stored in plants into liquid fuels capable of replacing fossil fuels. "Science":[ http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/1103/1?rss=1]

---