Volume fiVe number one, two thousand nine | spring

Hard Times in the Last Best Place

Property Rights, Stream Access
and Mitchell Slough
MSU Scientist
Changing Your World,
One Fungus at a Time

Denton Lives On

Marysville House: Montana Tavern

a Mother Lode of Curiosities
 science

UNDER
THE
RED HAT
Montana State Universit y scientific researcher
Gar y Strobel has discovered solutions
to scores of problems, but his latest discover y,
myco - diesel, just might change the world

BY SCOT T MCMILLION

UNTIL LAST NOVEMBER, only a handful

of people in the world had ever heard the term “myco-diesel.”
But if you Google it today, you’ll get thousands and thou-
sands of hits. Click on any one of them and you’ll find Gary
Strobel’s name.
So what’s myco-diesel? And who is Gary Strobel?
Both are a little complicated.
Myco-diesel is a collection of gases emitted by a South American
fungus that eats cellulose and spews something remarkably close to

THOMAS LEE
diesel fuel. Think of it as a fungoid fart that just might power a school
bus some day.

22 M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R LY 23
 Strobel is the guy who discovered the fungus and coined
the term myco-diesel, the latest coup in a remarkable career
based at Montana State University in Bozeman.
Now 70, Strobel has a resume that would intimidate most
scientific researchers. Through his studies of endophytes —
microorganisms that live between the cells of plants — he’s
figured out ways to fight crop diseases from Hawaii to Montana
to Central America. He’s developed olive trees that thrive in
the harsh Israeli desert. He’s discovered a better way to fight
malaria. He invented a new method to make the cancer-fight-
ing drug Taxol. He developed ways to safely handle human
waste in some of the world’s most trying environments, like war
zones and highly protected wilderness areas.
Gary Strobel and his son Scott select material to sample from an ulmo
tree (the source of the fungus) in the forest of Patagonia.
In 1987, he came up with a cure for Dutch elm disease
in trees (more on this later) and, when the Environmental
Protection Agency attacked him for scientific heresy for doing
so, he stood his ground. He prepared himself to go to jail if
necessary, then took his case to the United States Senate and
forced the agency to back off.
He’s mentored hundreds of students, he lectures around
the world, advises biotechnology companies and sits on a
variety of prestigious panels, and has attracted tens of millions
24
of dollars in research money to Montana, helping to push MSU
into the top echelon of American research institutions.
He travels the world, especially its jungles, discov-
ering new life forms and drawing stares with his funny red
hat, a homemade accessory that also serves as a collection
bag, pillowcase or towel, depending on his immediate needs.
(He’s made the hat distinctive enough that the Smithsonian
Institution now owns one in its collection.)
He also plays a mean didgeridoo, one of those big tubes
played by Aborigines in Australia. Lots of people can honk
away on one. But Strobel plays dance music. It’s a didgeridoo
you can boogie to.
He laughs easily, rides a little Honda motorcycle that’s
older than many of his students,
and makes hardwood fountain
pens in his spare time. He often
calls himself Strobie. But he
answers to Skip.
Joe the professor he’s not.
“He thinks what other
people haven’t thought,” said Bill
Hess, a retired biology professor
from Brigham Young University
who has collaborated with Strobel
for decades. “And he does what
other people haven’t done.”
Like discovering a fungus
that produces diesel fuel.
Not that the idea hit him like
lightning. Seven years before he
announced his findings, he had
gathered a sample of Gliocladium
roseum from an ulmo tree in
PHOTO COURTESY OF GARY STROBEL
Chile’s Patagonian rain forest,
storing it in a freezer and meaning
to get to it someday.
“It mouldered in my gourd
for all those years,” he said. “Then
we had this fuel crisis.”
Then he started doing some analysis, which told him he
had more to do.
So he talked to the National Science Foundation about
some grant money to pay for the complex chemical and genetic
work it took to analyze the fungus and its output.
“I think I’ve got a bug that makes diesel,” he told the
foundation in his grant application.
Three months later, he had the money. On Nov. 4, 2008,
the peer-reviewed journal Microbiology published his research
and the world learned that new word: myco-diesel.
Today, Strobel keeps a sample in his MSU office in a
Tupperware container, where it grows on a piece of wood he
brought back from Chile. Pop the top and you’ll see a sparse
pink fuzz on the wood. Stick your nose in there, and you’ll
get a whiff of something that evokes oily rags, the smell on
your hands after doing engine work, the air in a long-shuttered
mechanic’s shop.
It smells like possibilities.
A LITTLE HELP
MSU didn’t have the equipment Strobel needed to
fully analyze and dissect G. roseum. So he reached out to the
Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry Department of Yale Gliocladium roseum, the “myco-diesel” fungus, as
University. seen in different contexts. At top is the conidial stage
“I think it has potential” to make marketable fuel, the in a colorized photograph from a scanning electron
department chairman said. “But we have a lot of science to do microscope by Brad Geary at BYU. Center is a view of
between now and then.” the fungus in culture on a petri plate. At bottom is the
Many scientists in the rarified echelons of Ivy League asoscarp or “perfect” stage on a beech stump. In this
universities might look askance at a guy with a funny hat and stage, the fungus is called Ascoryne roseum.
an ancient motorcycle, calling from Montana to say he found a
fungus that makes diesel fuel. But this call found a ready ear.
The department chairman is Strobel’s son, Scott, who gained
his position at the relatively tender age of 42.
Now Yale and MSU have entered into a formal agreement
to help each other develop the myco-diesel potential. But it’s
not just the schools working together. It’s father and son.
“That doesn’t happen in science very often,” Gary Strobel
said.
Scott Strobel said his father never pushed him toward a
career in science, even though the smell of some lab chemicals
still evokes memories of his childhood.
He said his dad was always “a science guy,” and often
took him to the lab, where he made snow cones in beakers and
got to play with instruments delicate enough to measure the
weight of his signature on a sheet of paper. But Gary worked
regular hours and was home for dinner most nights. He hadn’t
yet begun to explore the world’s jungles, risking disease and
snakebite and heat stroke, parasites and strange food and ants
that leave their jaws under your skin when they bite you.
“All this Indiana Jones type of stuff didn’t come until
later,” Scott said.
And now son has joined father in far-flung expeditions.
As a prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor,
Scott Strobel uses that organization’s money to take under-
graduates to places like the rain forests of Peru and Ecuador to
gather endophytes, the organisms that make everything from
disinfectants to medicine to, potentially, motor fuel.
Gary Strobel goes along, sharing his knowledge in a
variety of fields.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF GARY STROBEL
M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R LY 25
 With that red hat and his big grin, Gary interacts well with the natives. what else might be possible?
“I needed to find out what
For adults, the hat makes an effective icebreaker. For children, these compounds are and what
they might do,” he said.
Gary often has a little toy car somewhere in his pockets. Scientists had already discov-
ered that yew trees produce the
cancer-fighting drug, Taxol. But
Strobel went out, on his own dime,
“He knows a little bit about a Strobel said. and found in the trees the endo-
lot of things,” Scott said. His dad is dismissive of his role phyte that actually does the work.
It’s not hard to find people in the project. While it didn’t prove commer-
who are better than Gary in fields “Scott’s the Hughes Professor,” cially viable, it got the world
like botany, mycology or molecu- he said. “I’m just his field grunt.” thinking about possibilities, and
lar biology, he said. But he looked pretty proud when major drug companies started
“But there aren’t very many he said it. showing up with checkbooks for
who span the breadth like he the university.
does,” he said. “The people who had been
Plus, he opens doors. With CAME TO IT
telling me to get a lawyer (in the
that red hat and his big grin, Gary THE HARD WAY Dutch elm controversy) wound
interacts well with the natives. For up greeting five people from Eli
adults, the hat makes an effec- Gary Strobel’s remarkable

tive icebreaker. For children, Gary successes took root in a potful of
often has a little toy car some- controversy in 1987, when Dutch
where in his pockets. elm disease was killing millions
“That’s the sort of thing of stately elm trees around the
he likes to do,” Hess said. “He country. He figured he could save
assumes everybody likes him. He’ll some trees by injecting them with a
joke and chat with anybody.” genetically altered bacteria he had
Scott Strobel’s program already found on wheat, one that produces
shows the promise of future fruit. an antibiotic that protects the trees
THOMAS LEE
THOMAS LEE
Lilly,” he said.
“That was two potent drugs
coming from the fields and forests
of Montana,” he noted. “What else is out there? To focusing on rain forests and their incredible diver- Strobel plays
find what’s out there, you have to go out there and sity of life forms, particularly the tens of thousands his didgeridoo
look.” of undiscovered endophytes. He went to Nepal and
— and plays it
well — inside
So that’s when the Indiana Jones stuff got China, northern Australia and Peru, Borneo and the his office.
started. He began bioprospecting around the world, Amazon, toting home from each trip a shopping bag

Students have discovered endo- from the fungus that causes the
phytes that could inhibit tubercu- European disease.
losis, fight drug resistant diseases So he dosed 14 elm saplings,
and accelerate the degradation of Strobel sniffs a petri dish an action that he describes as an act of civil disobedience
plastics, Scott Strobel said. sample of Muscodor albus, because the Environmental Protection Agency had forbidden
or stinky white fungus, in
And that’s the result of a his lab. The fungus makes
the experiment. But the rules were indecipherable, even to
handful of people making rela- volatile antibiotic gasses EPA scientists.
tively brief trips to a small patch that kill other fungi and “I was ready to go to jail,” Strobel recalled.
bacteria, Strobel said.
of jungle. There’s so much of it out The United States Senate then took up the issue, in what
there, and so many organisms yet the Wall Street Journal called “The Galileo Committee.”
to discover. That means the forests need to be protected, as do “Get off this man’s back,” former Sen. John Chaffee, a
the native people who know them well. Rhode Island Republican and staunch environmentalist told
“The forest is a resource that needs to be protected, and the EPA. The agency eventually complied, but not before
for purposes other than producing wood,” Gary Strobel said. Strobel had been officially censured by MSU brass and he
The program trains young scientists in ways to seek and had chainsawed his experimental trees into bits.
discover, shows them techniques Gary Strobel figured out “It was the ultimate sideshow of my life,” Strobel says
on his own. And it gives them a sense of ownership for their today. “I paid a lot of consequences for that.”
successes. Some have already patented their discoveries. But it paid off in the long run, partly because his treat-
“They can succeed at exploring where things aren’t ment proved safe and effective, but mostly because it stirred
known, which is what science is really all about,” Scott his curiosity. If a wheatfield bacteria could save elm trees,

26 M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R LY 27
 An analysis showed that it was, and that those gases contain most
of the compounds that make up diesel fuel. When he read the chemical
assay, “all the hairs on my arm stood up,” he said.
Burning fossil fuels releases “trapped” carbon that has
been stored for millions of years deep in the Earth. Burning
myco-diesel also would release carbon into the atmosphere,
but that carbon would be reabsorbed by growing plants.
This type of emission is “a hitchhiker on the carbon
cycle,” Strobel said. “It’s better to burn a log than coal.”
And there might be better bugs out there, he said. One of
Scott Strobel’s students has already found a very promising one.
Gary Strobel said he doesn’t do this work for the money.
He’s made a few hundred thousand dollars in licensing fees
and other revenue, but that was spread over decades. No matter
what happens, don’t look for him in a private jet, he said.
“If a product from Australia made it big, he’d send a lot
of the money back there to the people who helped him,” Hess
said. “Money is a tool for his science, but it’s not his goal. He
wants to push the frontiers of science.”
Strobel is hoping to have a myco-diesel demonstration
project set up within a couple years. He compares its poten-
tial to the first flight of an airplane by the Wright brothers in
1903, a journey of only 120 feet.
“In less than 15 years, they were using airplanes in World
War I,” Strobel said. “Undoubtedly, there are some bioengi-
neering problems I will face.”
While it took awhile before you could purchase a first
class ticket to Bombay, it eventually became commonplace.
People who knew the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk lived to
see modern jets skipping around the globe.
Just four months ago, nobody had ever heard of myco-
diesel.
They just might live long enough to buy a tankful.

Custom Stone

THOMAS LEE
full of samples for analysis in his MSU lab, financing most of Lab experiments showed that, Gary Strobel walks

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these travels from his own pocket.
He said he’s lost track of how many patents he’s filed —
“50 or 60, maybe” — for the products and process of these
previously unknown organisms. But he plucked one of the
most interesting — muscodor albans, which means “stinky
white” — from a cinnamon tree in Honduras.
He cultured that fungus in a petri dish and stored it in a
plastic box with a number of other samples. But all the other
samples died. Strobel figured out M. albans was pooting out
antibiotic gases that killed the other fungi and bacteria.
By replicating those gases with chemicals, he developed
a way to disinfect human waste, and the product is now used
by a thriving Belgrade company that ships toilets to the U.S.
Army, disaster assistance groups and wilderness travelers
needing to pack out their own waste.
It’s also been licensed to an agricultural biotech company
searching for natural ways to preserve fresh foods, and it has
possibilities for the treatment of garbage.
Strobel then started wondering if M. albans could be
found in temperate forests, which led him to Chile, where he
discovered G. roseum, the myco-diesel fungus.
unlike most fungi, G. roseum could from his office to
the lab where he
survive in the presence of M. albans. teaches at Montana
So he wondered: Is it making gases, State University.
too?
An analysis showed that it was, and that those gases
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thing for the fungus to digest.
Strobel is hoping the food will be cellulose, the most
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28 M O N T A N A Q U A R T E R LY 29