Action 7 News Live at 10
KOAT (ABC) Albuquerque, NM DMA: 44
10:14PM MDT May 05 2008
Programming Type: News

high prices at the pump continue to frustrate many folks. doug but gas prices, are also giving many people, 'ideas' for how to ease that pain. as action 7 news reporter matt grubs found out, a 'fungus' that was originally a wartime nuisance, may now hold the key to cheaper fuel prices - and maybe even cheaper food. diego martinez has designs on a very historic fungus. it's called trichoderma reesei - which you can go ahead and forget now - but know that it's been getting attention since world war ii. "it was eating holes in tents and canvas material such as uniforms and stuff like that." this is the fungus - touched up a bit for its c lose up. the goal of the research diego did with a bunch of other scientists at los alamos national lab and a few other places is pretty simple. "engineer the organism to produce enzymes cheaper." those enzymes help make ethanol - which is in much of the gas we pump everyday. what they do that's so unique is go after cellu lose as opposed to starch and they do it rather efficiently. that means - as diego patiently explains - you could make ethanol out of a corn stalk as opposed to a corn cob, and you could potentially make it cheaper. "diego says that while he was researching the history of this little fungus, he found something interesting. and that is that people started paying a whole lot of attention to it thirty years ago during the energy crisis of the 1970s." they just couldn't figure out a way to do it cheaply. diego's work could change that. "it couldn't have come fast enough in order to get this information out to the public." in a time when gas prices and food prices are racing toward who knows where, a very historic fungus could make a very timely back. in albuquerque matt grubs koat action 7 news. doug -- diego says the team from los alamos national lab, has partnered with two different bio-tech companies, in the quest to make the fungus part of a solution that's cheap enough, for someone to manufacture. doug a security breach at the sunport, has passengers on high alert... after a 20 year old broke into an area, that's off limits. arturo carillo is facing criminal charges. officials say on saturday, he walked right through a door marked authorized access only....which is before the security checkpoint. investigators