Father and son science team seek fuels from fungus.

45 NORTH FILMS -
A father-son team is hard at work unlocking the secrets of a fungus
that may prove a future source of liquid fuel.

Dr. Gary Strobel is a professor of plant pathology at Montana State
University, and his son, Dr. Scott Strobel, is chair of Yale University's
department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry.

Strobel Senior has spent much of his life trekking through the Earth's
jungles and forests in search diverse plant life. He has made hundreds of
discoveries and owns several patents with finds that have led to products
ranging from antibiotics to anti-cancer drugs.

He latest find, made deep in the Patagonian jungle, will not make it to
a chemist shop or drug-store, but may end up at a petrol station. It is a
endophyte - an organism with uniquely useful qualities that lives between
living plant cells.
"When we looked at the products of one organism called Gliocladium
in the last year or so, we realised that this microrganism...is a very special
fungus because it makes many of the products and the derivative of products
that are found in diesel, regular diesel fuel."

Strobel Sr. says that after a lifetime of studying plants, Gliocadium
may prove to be his most exciting find ever.
"When the analysis was done by gas chromatography/
mass-spectroscopy, there was a pile of data and as I started going through the
data I was totally flabbergasted at the kinds of molecules this organism was
making," he said.

Scott Strobel's love for science started 'in diapers' in his father's
lab as a toddler. Unlike his father, whose passion is to explore uncharted
jungles, Scott prefers to focus on exploring the unknown interior of
mollecules. While his father is off to make further discoveries around the the
planet, Scott and his students are on their own version of discovery, with
Gliocadium the subject.
"This organism is essentially able to take wood or cellulose,
cellulostic biomass and through a series of enzymatic conversions, which we
don't know anything about, convert that into a liquid fuel," he explains.

Strobel Jr. says that while the Gliocadium, or the diesel fungus, makes
diesel naturally, it produces it in minute amounts. His challenge is to
breakdown and map the fungus on a molecular level to find out how it produces
the hydro-carbons. With that information he hopes to turn Gliocadium into a
fuel producer of the future - on a commercially viable level.

The bigger picture for both Strobels is rampant deforestation that is
killing off a biodiversity that is yet to be discovered.
"Right now one of the things that is happening in order to produce
biodiesel and other types of food stuffs is that we are tearing down and
burning and destroying these forests so that we can apply them to other
economic efforts. End every time we do that we are destroying another
bio-diversity that is yet to be explored and discovered," says Scott
Strobel.
"I think the thing that isn't quite obvious to people just yet is
that fungi have an important economic benefit to offer. And so, to have those
forests intact and to be able to explore what is inside those trees offers an
economic opportunity, frankly, that warrants there preservation," he
added.

For Gary Strobel the issue is what he describes as a lack of funding
into further research. From cancer- fighting drugs to viable energy sources,
Strobel explains that the mysteries inside plants may hold the blueprints to
change the world as we know it.
"Here we are spending billions of dollars trying to figure out if
there is a one bacterial cell on Mars and we don't really know or understand
what lives here on Earth," says Strobel Sr.

For Gary Strobell the next mission is never far away. For Scott the
excitement of the work is in what those missions reveal.
The Strobels say that their father/son partnership will continue while
there are still discoveries to be made.