Psilocybin from E. Coli-- a revolution is fermenting!!!

[coAsTal]

E. coli engineered to make "magic mushroom" compound in beer-like process

Psilocybin is the active compound in magic mushrooms. Scientists hacked E. coli to dump it out.

www.inverse.com

C'mon Nexian chemists-- get busy!!!

Jones and his colleagues, including lead author and junior chemical engineering major Alexandra Adams, used metabolic engineering to engineer E. coli bacteria to produce huge amounts of psilocybin, about 1.16 grams per liter per fermentation batch. They did this by relocating the psilocybin-encoding DNA from mushrooms to the bacteria.

Subsequently, the scientists discovered the engineered bacteria can produce a lot of psilocybin — and quickly.
Magic mushrooms.
Dried magic mushrooms.

“It’s similar to the way you make beer, through a fermentation process,” Jones explained in a press release. “We are effectively taking the technology that allows for scale and speed of production and applying it to our psilocybin producing E. coli.”

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Here we go: (pdf attached)


Turns out it still requires a feedstock of 4-OH-ind, Ser and Met rather than just sugar and nutes but it's still an impressive step forwards.

 

[blue.magic]

I think this is more useful for GMP-grade psilocybin production for clinical trials, rather than for home biochemists.

Even if all the obstacles are resolved, the product will still be about 1 g/L at best (tedious extraction necessary) so it is still far far easier to just grow shrooms.

 

[Loveall]

Cool thanks for the post coAsTal. The bacteria is interesting research, especially if they improve yields and if a simple sugar/salt broth could be the starting point one day.

As a comparison:

A monotub with 5kg of stuff added can yield up to 200g dry grams of shrooms. Assuming 2% psilo, that's 4g yield, which interestingly is also in the ~1g/kg range (however using simpler starting materials).

 

[coAsTal]

I find it most interesting, because without chemical analysis, even grandma wouldn't have any idea what you've got going on

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Add one more step so that the 4-hydroxyindole can be produced directly from faeces and, bingo, we're onto a winner. The bed pan tek :lol:

 

[coAsTal]

It's pot-tential is priceless

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Well, it sure beats jenkem.

The further irony being, Psilocybe mushrooms already do a perfectly good job of turning not only poop but a vast range of other materials into psilocybin, often in impressive yield.

I'm just wondering what the consequences of having one's bowels colonised by the 'magic' GM E. coli might be. I think the omission of an indolamine-4-hydroxylase gene from the organism as developed is an intentional safety feature. But would the organism synthesise plain vanilla DMT from ordinary indole, or perhaps even 5-MeO-DMT from melatonin (or mexamine, at least)??

 

[moyshekapoyre]

I'm thinking this looks more efficient:

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/files.php?pid=490463&aid=60873

Just need to get the enzymes they produced and we're good to go with bulk right? Wonder if they would send them to me for research purposes?

 

[Loverofallthings]

Say what you will about Mckenna, but the man was ahead of his time:

At the one hour mark he takes a question. The answer to which is precisely the above article. Using gen-mod E Coli to produce psilocybin.

 

[Infundibulum]

I think this is more useful for GMP-grade psilocybin production for clinical trials, rather than for home biochemists.

Even if all the obstacles are resolved, the product will still be about 1 g/L at best (tedious extraction necessary) so it is still far far easier to just grow shrooms.

Indeed. The study is very nice as proof-of-principle and well suited for industrial-scale synthesis. Definitely not great as it stands for the home user. Ecoli will need to be grown constantly on antibiotics to maintain selection of the exogenous genes and as downwards said the home biochem will need to be supplementing precursors. Plus Ecoli stinks a bunch and hell knows what else is in the growth medium apart from psilocybin.

Yet, 1 g/L is a great yield, you could in theory drink 50ml (=2 shots) for strong trip.

 

[RhythmSpring]

Wait, so does this mean that people sick with E. Coli are slightly tripping? Maybe that's the delirium when you get sick? The vomiting?

(I find that the stupidest questions are the most interesting)