Diesel from mushrooms

''The fungus grows inside the Ulmo tree in the Patagonian rainforest in South America. "When we examined the gas composition of G. roseum, we were totally surprised to learn that it was making a plethora of hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives," the stuff of diesel, Strobel said. The fuel it produces has been dubbed "myco-diesel."

Cellulose, lignin and hemicellulose make up the cell walls in plants. They makes the stalks, sawdust and woodchip and cannot be digested by most living things. Some 400 million tons of this plant waste is produced ever year just from farmland, Strobel and his colleagues say. In current biofuel production, this waste is treated with enzymes called cellulases that turn the cellulose into sugar. Microbes then ferment this sugar into ethanol that can be used as a fuel.

If G. roseum can be used commercially to make fuel, a step could be skipped. '' [source]