
Psilocybin Produced in Yeast - filoeleven
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-psychedelic-compound-magic-mushrooms-yeast.html
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mikeg8
> "It's unfeasible and way too expensive to extract psilocybin from magic
> mushrooms and the best chemical synthesis methods require expensive and
> difficult to source starting substrates...”

This is one of those situations where I feel like we (humans) are approaching
it all wrong. Why over complicate it by trying to “extract” the psilocybin
instead of treating it like marijuana and growing the mushrooms in highly
controlled settings and then testing for potency?!

As someone who’s recently had very positive experiences with both large/small
doses of magic mushrooms, it’s disheartening to see us remake the mistakes of
the past by trying to over-engineer something from nature. IMO, the optimum
approach would be to have humility and simply be stewards of this wonderful
gift. There is no reason That psilocybin shouldn’t be administered in its most
common form, as it has been for thousands of years, other than it would be
harder to profit off of.

~~~
colechristensen
There are negative side effects from consuming the mushrooms which you don't
get from purified psilocybin.

Dosage is important. There isn't a way to test for potency which would ensure
a reliable dose.

Argument fallacies:

* your anecdotal positive experiences

* suggesting superiority because something is "from nature"

* referring to "mistakes from the past" without naming any

* suggesting superiority that "has been (done) for thousands of years"

Think about why these kinds of arguments are made on different topics which
you disagree with and then rethink why you are making them here.

~~~
ianai
Couldn’t dosage be averaged out by simply drying, “powdering”, and mixing the
mushrooms as batches? I think similar is used in winemaking.

~~~
msla
How is that highly artificial process any better than making a pill?

Plus, how do you know what other ingredients are in the mushrooms?

~~~
34679
The cannabis industry has learned that "what other ingredients" are in the
cannabis has a significant effect on the high produced by THC. This is known
as the entourage effect. You simply do not get the full benefits with THC
alone.

~~~
msla
We'll need to figure out what those ingredients are, and how they work, and
what negative effects they have.

Otherwise, we're being extremely unwise, and setting ourselves up for serious
problems later.

~~~
loeg
Or you could just do longitudinal studies on the thousands of people who
voluntarily consume these things without apparent ill effect. They don’t
appear to be immediately toxic so any risk here is fairly long term. Lots of
anecdata self-reporting on Erowid.

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IgorPartola
I think a lot of this discussion is missing the forest for the trees. Here we
have people arguing whether it’s better to make powder out of these
psychoactive mushrooms and use that as a drug vs extract pure psilocybin and
use that as a drug.

I know little of pharmacology but I can see one use of pure compounds: further
research. Analyzing how psilocybin affects serotonin receptors could
potentially help design other drugs that act on those receptors without
psychedelic side effects. It could also help with creating other psilocybin
analogs with different effects. And of course having the ability to study in
detail the effects that other substances in the psychoactive mushrooms have
might help identify other areas of study.

As a software analogy, this is like the debate whether it’s better to have
Google Maps vs mapping software and all the underlying data. Of course it’s
better to have the latter even if some romanticize the former.

~~~
nugga
When "researching cannabis", using just pure thc may not be optimal because
cbd, cbn, and other chemicals produce a different kind of high and, if I
recall correctly, especially cbd counters some of the most negative effects of
thc, etc.

Similarily, people might be worrying about oversimplifying mushrooms to just
psilocybin because mushrooms have more than one chemical in them and they
might work in a synergistic way as well.

~~~
IgorPartola
I think you are agreeing with my point: if you can synthesize pure THC you can
compare its effects to the cocktail of substances that is cannabis and
identify CBD as another active part of the equation. Once you synthesize both
you can look for a third, and so on. You can then much more quickly study
interactions and combinations. Waiting to genetically create a different
combination of all these substances is going to be much slower. Also it allows
you to combine them with other substances to study those interactions. Imagine
a study of a combination of CBD, a beta blocker, and psilocybin. That would be
a difficult thing to do if you start with just the plant material, but easier
with pure substances.

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andrew_xor_andy
> the best chemical synthesis methods require expensive and difficult to
> source starting substrates

This type of thing always amazes me about nature -- obviously all the
ingredients necessary exist in the soil the mushroom is grown in!

Yet the best we can do to mimic nature is get some hard-to-acquire substrates.
It's so interesting how, given enough time, the universe can produce a self-
replicating organism that can do something with basic building blocks that we
can't do with current technology...

(okay, maybe this is a bit romantic, but it's still fun to think about)

~~~
ralusek
> all the ingredients necessary exist in the soil the mushroom is grown in

I can't speak for mushrooms, but for plants, the vast majority of the mass
actually comes from carbon in the air (breathes in CO2, takes the carbon,
breathes out O2) and obviously water.

~~~
hammock
>Generally, plants make their food using the sun's energy (photosynthesis),
while animals eat, then internally digest, their food. Fungi do neither: their
mycelium grows into or around the food source, secretes enzymes that digest
the food externally, and the mycelium then absorbs the digested nutrients.

[https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/publications/00029/mushwhat.ht...](https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/publications/00029/mushwhat.htm)

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scythe
Psilocybin may be an underrated chemical precursor. 4-substituted indoles are
notoriously difficult to synthesize. Psilocin is a rare example of a natural
one. (LSD is another.) For example, a milliliter of 4-bromoindole costs a
whopping $75:

[https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/aldrich/524336?...](https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/aldrich/524336?lang=en&region=US)

Presumably this technique could produce psilocybin for much less than $75 per
milliliter.

~~~
derefr
Are you sure that these precursors aren't just expensive _because_ so many of
the compounds that go into them, or which come from them, are controlled
substances?

There are a lot of bulk reactants that I'd like to buy for chemistry
experiments, but can't (because they're controlled, because they can be used
to make illegal things), so I have to make them myself from even earlier
precursor chemicals; this adds (via labor costs) to the cost of making the
final product. Presumably, even big producers like Sigma are in the same
situation.

~~~
colechristensen
If you're curious go search.

Sigma sells cocaine, heroin, and LSD, for example, nevermind precursors. They
won't sell them to _you_ , but they will sell them to organizations with the
correct permissions to buy them. Regulatory compliance might add to the cost,
but for a company like Sigma I'd expect doing things in-house to lower costs
not raise them.

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jmkd
There's a long history of pairing entheogenic substances with yeast and its
bi-products.

For around 1900 years a biannual event took place near Athens known as The
Eleusinian Mysteries.[1] This was a real occurrence of which Plato, Socrates,
Cicero, Marcus Aurelius and many others wrote about or attended in person. The
event culminated in a secret ceremony in which participants invariably
reported losing their fear of death [2] Much has been written on the topic,
with growing speculation through the 20th century that the initiates took an
entheogenic substance, such as psilocybin or ergotamine, from mushrooms, beer
or barley. [3]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries)
[2] [https://www.ancient.eu/article/32/the-eleusinian-
mysteries-t...](https://www.ancient.eu/article/32/the-eleusinian-mysteries-
the-rites-of-demeter/) [3] PDF
[https://www.mattioli1885journals.com/index.php/MedHistor/art...](https://www.mattioli1885journals.com/index.php/MedHistor/article/download/7443/7419)

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msla
Realistically, I know this will be used to make pills.

But the first thing I thought when I saw the headline was, "Wow. That's some
interesting beer."

~~~
elil17
I mean it sounds like if you could get your hands on this yeast you could
actually make psychedelic beer (or bread).

~~~
hatsunearu
I think the method uses some special enzymes that can only be really be used
with yeast. So yeast is just a supporting role in the operation and the enzyme
is the star.

They say they tried to get E. Coli to operate the enzyme (E. Coli is used
often to make all kinds of drugs, like insulin) but it didn't work and got
yeast to work with it.

~~~
ncmncm
By my reading the yeast does the whole job, short of purification, meaning
getting the yeast, sugar, and alcohol out of it afterward.

Why even a 50% loss of product would be debilitating is a mystery. It's not
like the yeast collects a salary, or like sugar is expensive. The author
doesn't seem to realize how little of the stuff is needed for a dose.

~~~
tonyarkles
Your sibling comment said a yield of 600mg/L, and that a 30mg dose has
psychoactive effects. Seems like that works out to 20 doses/L, which is a
better yield than beer!

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farco12
For those interested, here is a link to the paper referenced in the article:

[https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S109671761930401X?...](https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S109671761930401X?token=61C81A51D67AF660DF1456874A2F7320ADE07D9BD4F7CC420E1779362DAF5E3834B3B8ED0608E029398AEE4BAE0E0214)

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0x8BADF00D
It looks like this would be used for large scale synthesis of psilocybin.

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tuyiown
Reminded me of a case of mass food poisoning related to bread making people
delirious: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_Pont-Saint-
Esprit_mass_po...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_Pont-Saint-
Esprit_mass_poisoning)

------
collyw
Psylocibin is already synthetically available as I understand - its a pill
they get in Johns Hopkins trails for smoking cessation. Anyone know how that
is produced?

Another point they make is about psylocin. As I understand, as soon as
psylocibin hits your stomach acid it gets converted to psylocin anyway. People
use lemon to do the process before ingesting in order for it to hit them
faster.

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crusso
Yeast is everywhere. I was recently reading about how to cultivate wild yeast
in a jar left on your countertop for use in making sourdough bread.

What happens when some of the yeast you capture in the environment is
producing psilocybin?

I saw no mention in the article of considerations to keep these genetic
modifications contained within the psilocybin manufacturing process.

~~~
tehjoker
Generally, most genetic modifications like these are harmful to the
competitiveness of the microorganism in the wild. It's possible that producing
psilocybin could help it be more competitive, but this would be the exception
rather than the rule. Generally, the organism expends so much energy and
material producing the engineered substance that it's worse at doing other
things.

~~~
RIMR
Imagine if it actually started beating out other yeasts until we starting
having difficulty baking bread that doesn't make people hallucinate.

I'm not saying this is likely to happen, but just imagine...

~~~
hahajk
Well yeast already produces alcohol!

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hatsunearu
Is that why flour is flying off the shelves right now? ;)

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tehjoker
The construction of the tripping factory.

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kfrzcode
Consciousness studies will be the next frontier and may bring our race
further, faster, than space exploration. In my opinion.

~~~
ralusek
I've never once heard a bit of insight from a psychonaut that was particularly
game-changing. We're all connected, consciousness is an illusion, societal
structures are somewhat arbitrarily defined, etc. These are the existential
thoughts of teenagers. Life is just energy, energy is just vibrations,
everything is a fractal, etc, these are just the existential speculations of
people making baseless claims.

Consciousness as a useful frontier, in my opinion, will only have utility as
it intersects with neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Producing
consciousness with AI will be game-changing. Altering or affecting
consciousness with neuroscience, or allowing consciousness to interact with
neuroscience in such a way that interfaces with other technologies will be
game-changing, sure.

But giving people psychedelics and having them explore their own
consciousnesses is not going to catalyze our society forward by leaps and
bounds, that has been done since at least the 60s. I obviously don't care if
people do whatever they'd like, I just don't see the point in romanticizing
them.

~~~
mx24
> Consciousness as a useful frontier, in my opinion, will only have utility as
> it intersects with neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

So by neuroscience and artificial intelligence I'm guessing we can assume
you're just referring to western science.

How about the Buddhists? Or the shamans in tribal societies around the world?
Was there no utility in their understanding and manipulation of consciousness
(which was often achieved through the use of psychedelics)? In many ways the
shamans and other spiritual practitioners are far ahead of western science in
terms of understanding consciousness. However, that is rarely acknowledged in
western society, especially among technical folks such as ourselves. Western
science is not the only valid way to understand reality.

~~~
kfrzcode
This is the thread I was pulling on.

Have you ever stopped to really ponder the literal awesome nature of dreaming?
A relatively simple function we all practice, even our dogs.

When you're in a lucid dream, you have the ability to construct your reality
with nothing more than intention. It's a higher fidelity experience for every
sense than any virtual reality gear known to Silicon Valley could provide. The
nature of lucid dreaming combined with a deeply introspective nature have
certainly led me to believe there is a deep well of discovery when it comes to
studying consciousness. Is it an emergent phenomenon? Is it something else
entirely? Are we all just deterministic robotic meat-sacks? Are we truly just
in a simulation?

> Western science is not the only valid way to understand reality.

"Dreams represent just one type of illusion. The whole universe arises and
dissolves like a mirage. Everything about us, even the most enlightened
qualities, are also dreamlike phenomena. There's nothing that is not
encompassed within the dream of illusory being; so in going to sleep, you're
just passing from one dream state to another."

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refurb
A few comments:

\- psilocybin is pretty easy to synthesize with the exception of the
phosphorylation (can be hard to purify without degrading it)

\- this is a research publication, so of course they put their findings in the
best possible light (“finally the synthesis everyone has been waiting for”)

