The research cited herein is part of an ongoing, longer-term DOE research project to which, we believe, we've earlier referred.
It's just more evidence confirming some inherent validity in Joe's WVU research, in the 1970's, that biological systems can be employed to "solubilize" organic matter in coal mine wastes, and thereby make them available for "harvesting" and subsequent processing into value-added materials.
Again, this is, or was, a longer-term research project, sponsored by the USDOE, - at the University of SC, oddly, not WVU - and other progress reports exist.
But, perhaps it would be informative to contact Professor Mishra directly to get the full story.
The excerpt:
"Large scale solubilization of coal and bioconversion to utilizable energy. Fifth quarterly technical report, January 1, 1995--March 31, 1995
South Carolina Univ., Columbia, SC (United States). Dept. of Biological Sciences
Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
In order to develop a system for a large scale coal solubilization and its bioconversion to utilizable fuel, we plan to clone the genes encoding Neurospora protein that facilitate depolymerization of coal. We also plan to use desulfurizing bacteria to remove the sulfur in situ and use other microorganisms to convert biosolubilized coal into utilizable energy following an approach utilizing several microorganisms. In addition the product of coal solubilized by fungus will be characterized to determine their chemical nature and the mechanism of reaction catalyzed by fungal product during in vivo and in vitro solubilization by the fungus or purified fungal protein."
Note the term; "Large scale" in the title. This work is not intended to result in some novel laboratory demonstration for entertainment purposes. The target must be commercialization.