A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest, Gliocladium roseum, naturally synthesizes diesel fuel from cellulose, the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth — which has ramifications beyond its obvious potential for producing biofuels:
But beyond the biofuel implications, Strobel said that because the fungus can manufacture what we would normally think of as components of crude oil, it casts some doubt on the idea that crude oil is a fossil fuel.“It may be the case that organisms like this produced some — maybe not all — but some of the world’s crude,” Strobel said.