Geodesic Chemistry; Breakthrough or Nonsense?

[SKA]

Searching for Geodesic spheres I stumbled uppon a Topic in the Hip-Forums that speaks of Geodesic Chemistry and a device
in which LSA can be (relatively) easily converted to LSD.

This guy is either talking straight out of his ass, OR he is unimaginably brilliant and conceptualised a breakthrough method of LSD production.
Here the Device and it's mechanisms of action are explained;

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I, having no chemistry background whatsoever, wondered how plausible this might be.
If it turns out to be crap, then so be it. If it IS plausible then what a genius this guy is.
In any case I feel this defenitely needs to be looked into.

 

[benzyme]

he's forgetting one major detail


LSA must be hydrolyzed by an auxiliary base, prior to adding ethyl groups;
but I guess he's talking about applying electrical charge to polarize the amide.
i'm a bit skeptical.


LSD and LSA are irregular in shape, asymmetric.
adding too much flux across that chiral carbon will cause isomerization, rendering it inactive.
also, ethane is nonpolar, not very reactive; a reagent in the reaction should have a stronger dipole.
well, at least he's imaginative; spewing math equations and alchemical principles, but I can tell he doesn't really understand reaction chemistry.

 

[SKA]

If you have, or anyone here has better understanding of reaction chemistry,
then perhaps could you see a device such as he mentioned be of any use in chemically converting known tryptamines and/or phenetylamines?

 

[benzyme]

I'm not really sure how it would work.
he's assuming molecules are symmetric, and have even distribution of charges.

it's one thing to have repeating units of homogenous molecules, aka crystals, or at least two molecules with even electron distribution, like inorganic salts; or even organic molecules to ionic salts
but his scheme is much different. sounds real cute in theory, but the application of it isn't very practical or feasible. LSD, DMT, psilocin, and mescaline all have some areas of polarity.
altering it with electricity will just void the activity by rearranging functional groups.

alchemy is dead, long live alchemy.
let the microbes do the work. they are much more efficient at it.

I still favor the biotransformation solution. a liquid culture of bacterial cells to produce
these molecules (except LSA..that's the fungal cultures); much more feasible.

 

[SKA]

I'm not really sure how it would work.
he's assuming molecules are symmetric, and have even distribution of charges.

it's one thing to have repeating units of homogenous molecules, aka crystals, or at least two molecules with even electron distribution, like inorganic salts; or even organic molecules to ionic salts
but his scheme is much different. sounds real cute in theory, but the application of it isn't very practical or feasible. LSD, DMT, psilocin, and mescaline all have some areas of polarity.
altering it with electricity will just void the activity by rearranging functional groups.

alchemy is dead, long live alchemy.
let the microbes do the work. they are much more efficient at it.

I still favor the biotransformation solution. a liquid culture of bacterial cells to produce
these molecules (except LSA..that's the fungal cultures); much more feasible.

That would be the most attractive method.
However I imagine it must be quite difficult to keep enzymes, that can biosynthesize DMT or LSD from a cheap, abundantly available precursor alive outside a body in some artificial culture. Then you'd have to separate the DMT from the enzymes and their lquid or gelatine culture.

Perhaps the right "Machine" to biosynthesize DMT and the like is a plant with such enzymatic capabilities. According to Shulgin feeding DET to P.Cubensis mycelium, results in mushrooms that contain 4-HO-DET, because the mushroom contains a rather indiscriminating 4-Hydroxylase enzyme, which normally 4-hydroxylises the mushrooms own DMT into Psilocybin.

Perhaps some plants can biosynthesise DMT, Mescaline, Psilocybin in large quantities if they are just fed the right precursors in proper amounts?

 

[benzyme]

they'd need to have the transcripts present for the enzymes in the respective metabolic pathways.

enzymes can get saturated with substrate. too much will inhibit expression, and may even kill the host cell; it's just a matter of trial and error


and the specialized enzymes we're considering aren't in free solution...they are expressed using a vector, i.e. a bacterial cell with the coding sequence for INMT cloned into its own DNA sequence. They can be maintained using routine methods (agar plates, lyophilization, etc.)