The resurgent interest in alternative fuels has propelled interest in using biomass “feedstocks” as an energy source for liquid fuel and bio-electricity generation. But bio-fuel (and other ‘commodity chemicals’) derived from biomass faces one big technical challenge: how to separate the useful constituents of cellulose-based biomass (i.e., its its six-carbon, building block sugars) from the not so useful ones (such as lignin and hemicellulose)? REcetn research has confirmed that the key to biomass conversion to fuel is a fungus with the less-than-appealing name of brown rot fungus.