Gliocladium roseum. Say it three times fast.

Major businesses and universities are racing on a variety of research fronts to see who can harness fuels from natural sources cost-effectively, and Gary Strobel at Montana State University may have found a unique two-pronged solution in the form of a small mushroom.

G. roseum potentially changing the world in a petri dish.

Nicknamed “superfungus,” this mushroom, found on the Ulmo trees in Patagonia, Gliocadium roseum has been discovered as potential source of bio fuel by accident in an experiment originally designed to test how different fungi responded to antibiotics. Researchers were surprised to find G.roseum had not only survived, but thrived after exposure where every other fungi was dying. Naturally absorbing carbon dioxide? Prong one check.

The unusual benefit to G. roseum is not in the input, but what it puts out: diesel. Or something very close to it, dubbed “mycodiesel.”

This is where the fungus’s potential lies. In eliminating many of the additional steps typically needed to harness fuel from plants like corn, G. roseum is appearing to already be cost-effective. Scientist’s ability to synthesis the benefit parts of the mushroom in the lab also nip fears of new found business interests in the rain forest in the bud.

Most biofuels, even when very efficiently harnessed, are not a magic bullet to the growing energy crisis. Discounting often-harmful hydrocarbons as a byproduct, biofuels in a perfect world still produce carbon dioxide. G. roseum, by directly taking in carbon dioxide and excreting mycodiesel, is like few other organisms that are coming to be seen as potential golden eggs. That produce diesel gas.

And if that weren’t enough, secondary rounds of research are revealing that the mushroom also produces potent antibiotics as a byproduct.

As G. roseum is moved into the lab and researchers begin testing it to the demands of a level of fuel output useful to our needs, it is yet to be determined if “Superfungus” will live up to its name.