whitebread420 said:
this whole topic is dumb. why would you transform a vector like yeast to somehow start shitting out DMT when there are plants that already do it. you would still need to purify it some how, and most likely the molecule would be destroyed or kill the organism.
Well, it is not that dumb. there are good reasons to do such a thing; a few of them are:
1. the more dmt sources the better.
2. yeast is something that everyone can grow easily at home. literally everyone, and this is the true key for self-sufficiency (if of course you're after it). There are truly very few people that get their dmt from their garden-grown mimosa or chaliponga or chacruna. Most order these plants.
3. yeast grows rapidly, even phalaris cannot beat it
4. yeast is something very inconspicuous - and cannot be banned by governments! You can order yeast without sweating that the customs may intercept it or without getting ready to make excuses about dyestuff or pot-pourris.
whitebread420 said:
If you wanted to think like a real biologist, you could easily genetically modify the promoter region of whatever the fuck protein(s) make DMT in the PLANT and extract like normally. Or even create a transgenic plant. This of course would cost a shit ton (like grant funded amount of shit ton) and you would need a lab to work in. Shit .... selective breeding would probably be your best route, or engineering a plant utilizing aneuploidy (like strawberries or watermelon
Well, genetically modifying the promoter is a grand idea, but you really need the tools to do it in these plants. You got no sequence of the genomic regions you plan to modify neither well-established tools to carry on transfections in such plants. Where would you start from? which loci would you modify? We do not even know the genes that do this kind of job in these plants, we only know the putative enzymatic activities that make dmt in plants.
On the contrary, transforming yeast and bacteria is something very very routinely done, it's easy and you do not have to re-invent the wheel. Above all, we have a good idea as to what to do and how too do it (e.g. what genes to add, how to verify them). One could easily write a research proposal for doing such a project - I doubt you'd write a viable proposal with your idea.
Creating transgenic plant is a good idea, but again it is not different from making transgenic yeast! Actually it is more difficult and the end-product (i.e. the plant would take much more time to grow, as opposed to the rapid growth of transgenic microbes.
Finally, selective breeding is something that takes true dedication and many years - if there's one reason why people go for genetic engineering that's because it's a noce shortcut.
Thus far your proposed ideas are not bad, but they do not offer a better alternative to genetically modifying microbes. Since it is a new area, it's better to go from the tried and tested way instead of making things unnecessarily difficult and voluminous.
whitebread420 said:
btw M.S cell/molecular biology here. sorry if i sound like an asshole
You do come off a as an asshole, but we forgive you. Just make sure you don't come of as one in the future!