[P]lant scientists Paula Berman and Janka Höfer and their team set out to map and rebuild the biochemical pathways behind these compounds.

They identified the key genes used by two plants – Psychotria viridis and Acacia acuminata – to make DMT, and the step-by-step chemical pathways involved in producing the compound.

Then, they combined these with genes and pathways already known from psychedelic mushrooms (Psilocybe cubensis) and the cane toad (Rhinella marina), added supporting enzymes from rice and cress, then genetically introduced the combined genetic toolkit and kaboodle into tobacco plants (Nicotiana benthamiana).

The tobacco was chosen not because of its own drug production, but because it's basically the lab rat of plant species, with its fast growth.

Finally, the team carefully monitored the plant's production of five psychedelic tryptamines: DMT originally from plants; psilocin and psilocybin from mushrooms; and bufotenin and 5-MeO-DMT from toads.

The modified tobacco plants were found to produce all five compounds simultaneously. Because the different production pathways compete for the same resources, some compounds were produced in lower quantities than in their original sources.

However, the production was high enough to suggest that with a bit more tweaking, the system could function as a biological tryptamine factory for researchers.

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[–] [S] 1 point 7 months ago*

Unfortunately, the team are colonizers living in occupied Palestine. Just learned that info. What a shame.

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  • 53 comments in c/science@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 82 points 7 months ago

    Now this is what I pay my taxes for.

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  • [–] 69 points 7 months ago
    [–] 35 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    These are the breakthroughs I want to hear about. I’m off to become a farmer.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    What's playing on the bluetooth in your tractor?

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  • [–] 17 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Grateful Dead in theory, NOFX in practice.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Gave myself a NOFX tattoo in 7th grade science class back in the 90's using a protractor , Bic pen ink and string from my sock

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago*

    Not exactly sure . I had remembered as a kid seeing a picture in a book of some indigenous people doing a sort of stick and poke tattoo with a sharpened needle and string wrapped around the end as an inkwell (I'm guessing) and I thought it was necessary at the time.

    The tattoo only says IFX these days as I wasn't pounding the protractor in far enough. Which everyone knows gets you nowhere , ya gotta pound things in

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  • [–] 21 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    I'd give the left nut of every man I've ever met for a mushroom I could grow that produces LSD instead of psilocybin

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Just get yourself some ergot-infected rye and eat that. It's basically the same thing, right?

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    There's the whole thing where the first few joints of your fingers and toes turn black and rot off, but sure, eat some ergot.

    Also, Datura is a common weed. Collect a bunch of seeds and share with your friends so y'all can all trip for days and not even know it. The kidney failure can kind of suck.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Oof, I didn't know that. I figured it would be a bad idea and was being sarcastic, but I didn't know about the necrotic tissue and all that.

    Datura, I wouldn't even joke about fucking with because some people are actually stupid enough to try it...

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  • [–] 40 points 7 months ago

    They engineered tobacco to produce triptamines and DMT 🥳

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago

    The science we love.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago

    And not one mention about how the trip was... No one can tell me they didn't try!

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  • [+] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    They'll fuck it all up. They should be absolutely prohibited from participating in the Cannabis industry, after their egregious behavior in the tobacco industry. They should have been completely put out of business, except too many people too addicted to just cut off manufacturing.

    Today, less than 10% of people reported smoking a cigarette in the previous year. When it's down to less than 5%, the big tobacco companies should be closed. Highly regulated independent tobacco companies can try to survive, but the big companies that hid the dangers of cigarettes, and strongly denied the dangers, while simultaneously making their products more addicting, more addicting quicker, and harder to quit, need to be punished by going out of business. They are one of the most evil industries that have ever existed.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    Wacky Tobacky

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (12 children)

    i wonder how it's like to be on all of them at the same time

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago* (8 children)

    Can’t speak to being on all of them but multiple psychedelics at once change the visuals a bit and add confusion, at least in my experience.

    Instead of the usual LSD color shift and rhythmic “breathing” of the room, the visuals were more geometric and I didn’t have the same mental clarity. I got a nonstop stream of thoughts that would interrupt my ability to follow where the thought was going.

    On top of all the other visual noise it was like my peripherals had a colored plastic overlaying what I was seeing, so it would appear more green sometimes and red other times.

    I wouldn’t recommend it. The experience may be completely different from mine because mine was LSD, NBOMe, and a synthetic psilocybin analogue, but sticking with either LSD or psilocybin is way better. Each drug has its own side effects that are manageable by themselves but make it really uncomfortable when they stack. I remember being itchy, thirsty, and kept swapping from being too hot and too cold. I had energy but was couch locked. I wanted to talk to my brother and room mates but when I tried to communicate, new thoughts just kept coming in and I’d forget what I was trying to say halfway through a thought. It was very frustrating.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago

    I've done acid and mushies at the same time and totally loved it. The way they played off each other and created varying peaks of intensities of each was quite the experience. Absolute rollercoaster and exhausting for sure but for me it worked out great. I wasn't really trying to communicate with anyone though and yeah if at any point I had a goal for something it was more or less impossible. Just gotta float down those rapids and see where you end up not much point trying to swim anywhere specific

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    2c-p was different from lsd because I felt more "sober" (despite all the visual stuff and running thoughts, I was more aware where I am, I had no "gravity issues", etc), and also saw the geometric stuff, like hexagonal ripples on water and fractal clouds. So if you mixed with 2c-something, this could be just that.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    Yep! Wanted to prevent having people think it’s related to DMT since they’re completely different but that’s the one

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    That one was sadly still on my bucket list prior to having left the scene; I may never experience it now. Though, I had quite the experience with 5-meo-mipt. Inspired by Alexander Shulgin, I chose administration via vaporization and inhalation. It’s probably the most intense psychedelic trip I have ever had by far… and my buddy and I used to take 10g of golden caps at the beach all the time. A little bit of that stuff goes a long way.

    Interesting too, the chemical transitions from a translucent white to a deep profound red after vaporizing it. Quite the effect.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago

    'Psychonauts' are people that explore their minds with drugs and they are really focused on exploring these things. Someone made a schematic some years ago, with a list of all kinds of drugs and how they work together.

    Oc, I don't have a link, sorry..

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago

    I'm imagining an Inception-like scenario where you start at the first/lightest level, and then work your way down to the lowest/hardest, then slowly come back up, similar to peaking and the comedown, but with more stages. I'd imagine dosage would be a real issue here.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago

    Uplifting news

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  • [+] 3 points 7 months ago (16 children)
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (15 children)

    Actually the tobacco plant species used in scientific research has hardly any nicotine, 10–100× less than the species used by commercial industry, and it's not naturally carcinogenic either. The carcinogens come from all the other shit cigarette companies add to it.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (14 children)

    That and exposing your lungs to the products of combustion regularly.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (13 children)

    There's no evidence linking cannabis smoke to lung cancer. I don't see why tobacco would be any different if it wasn't covered in radioactvity and poison and radioactive poison.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    Cannabis smoke is not a recognised carcinogenic agent. That is different from saying there's no evidence linking it to cancer.

    It's smoke in the lungs on a regular basis. That's plenty evidence.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    That is different from saying there’s no evidence linking it to cancer.

    Okay, provide said evidence then.

    I'm aware benzene and other byproducts of combustion should increase lung cancer risk, but a wide swathe of studies has failed to ever conclusively establish a connection between cannabis smoke and cancer.

    (Also cannabis in California actually is labeled with a cancer risk... not due to smoking it, but due to the presence of the terpene Myrcene, which is why you'll find the warning even on edibles. Still, that's just California being California, as I understand it the warning is there simply because Myrcene has a benzene ring in its chemical structure like many aromatic compounds do.)

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (4 children)

    but a wide swathe of studies has failed to ever conclusively establish a connection between cannabis smoke and cancer.

    The list of known carcinogens is quite short. That is mostly because it is difficult to conduct studies with a large enough sample to be sure that something is a carcinogen with high statistical reliability.

    Given our current knowledge, it may be argued that eating fast food every day is not bad for you, as there are no conclusive studies linking it to increased death rates.

    In the laboratory, most mutagenic compounds are labelled as mutagenic despite the fact that they are not known carcinogens.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (3 children)

    The list of known carcinogens is quite short. That is mostly because it is difficult to conduct studies with a large enough sample to be sure that something is a carcinogen with high statistical reliability.

    Benzene is certainly one of them, and it's present in cannabis smoke (well, all smoke from burned plant matter, so cannabis included).

    Otherwise I'm not sure what your point is. They wouldn't need to identify specific compounds to establish a strong correlative relationship between lung cancer and cannabis. Such a relationship has never been established, and not for lack of trying.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Good morning, the list of known carcinogens is quite short. It is quite short because the evidence required to get on that list is quite extensive. This is an article explaining the basics of how that list works: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/25081-carcinogens It is not a comprehensive explanation of how it is made, but it explains the basic reasoning behind it.

    Knowing a compound is carcinogenic is not enough to link it to something being carcinogenic with high statistical reliability. The reason why that list exists is that statistical evidence is more reliable than scientific evidence. You can build a scientific model to explain why something happens, but that always has some assumptions. A large enough statistical sample has a much higher confidence. We know that pure benzene is carcinogenic, that is why it's mostly prohibited to use in research and production. Do we know if other products containing benzene are carcinogenic because of benzene? Not really.

    We can make an assumption: products who contain benzene and to whom people are regularly exposed are carcinogenic. It does indeed make sense as an hypothesis, however we don't know if it is true with statistical reliability. It may be true for some mixtures and not for others. This is in my opinion sufficient evidence to link some in general to cancer. Do we have any proof that any kind of smoke other than tobacco causes cancer? No, we do not.

    However, the fact that we do not have such evidence does not mean that smoke does not cause cancer. We have strong evidence that smoke causes cancer, however we can not prove it with enough statistical reliability. We can not prove it statistically because this kind of studies is complicated to perform as it requires data that is difficult to obtain. You have to study a large sample of people, tens or hundreds of thousands, throughout their life while they perform one such action. As such you'd need to follow a large group of users who smoke cannabis and are open to receiving regular checkups and interviews. You also need a negative control: a group of people who does not smoke marijuana. However, tobacco and red meat are also known carcinogens; to exclude whether they got cancer from these causes you'd need separate groups to compare to: people who smoke marijuana but not tobacco, people who also smoke tobacco, people who smoke both and eat red meat, people who smoke marijuana, no tobacco but eat meat, people who smoke marijuana not tobacco and no meat. Now add to this that being an hairdresser is a known carcinogens and you'll start to understand why obtaining a definitive answer is difficult despite the fact that many studies exist.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    That all makes perfect sense, but if it could be established for tobacco, why not for cannabis? The ROA is identical, the confounding factors are more-or-less identical.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Tobacco has been used regularly for way longer and in much larger quantities than cannabis. There's been much more attention on tobacco as it is something that through the past few centuries was widely spread across society.

    Widespread usage of cannabis is something moderately recent.

    Cannabis is also consumed in smaller quantities: an average user may smoke one or two cigarettes a day, while a tobacco smoker easily smokes 10 to 20. Moreover, tobacco is legal while cannabis has been illegal in most places until very recently when it started being allowed in a few countries. This leads to much more data regarding tobacco available than for cannabis.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    All we need is a crispr gun and the psychedelic DNA...Cherry tree? Pewpew!

    An Apple? Pew pew! Pomegranate? Heck yeah pewpew! Peach! Pewpew!

    Then wait ten years and invite your friends over. Lock up all the knives!

    36hrs later....you didn't lock up the forks or the garage didn't you? People running out of the front door and into traffic with a fork or a pencil in their eyeball.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Shhh, the Narcs are listening.

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