If you want to experience an amazing psychedelic trip today, chances are you’ll opt for magic truffles or magic mushrooms. Both of these fungi contain the powerful hallucinogen psilocybin, a chemical compound that can induce intense visual, auditory, and emotional tripping.
Read also: Want to have a positive outlook on life? Take a truffle!Psilocybin-producing bacteria
Scientists have now found a new way to harvest this psychedelic compound in large quantities—and in a very interesting way! They have developed bacteria that can produce psilocybin within their own cells and then “excrete” it in higher concentrations than has been possible to date in any other biologically developed organism. According to the researchers, this is a step in the right direction toward producing and utilizing the “medicine” on an industrial scale.
Researchers at Miami University succeeded in transferring the DNA sequences responsible for psilocybin production from a mushroom to a microbial host, a strain of E. coli, the common bacterium most often associated with food poisoning. The bacteria are “tricked” into producing psilocybin through a practice known as metabolic engineering, which uses optimization of genetic and regulatory processes in cells to increase the production of a specific substance.
“Similar to brewing beer”
To the researchers’ great surprise, the E. coli bacteria began churning out psilocybin on a large scale, at a concentration of 1.16 grams per liter. “It’s similar to how you make beer, through a fermentation process. We’re effectively taking the technology that enables scale and speed of production and applying it to our psilocybin-producing E. coli,” says Andrew Jones, a biological engineer at Miami University. “What’s exciting is the speed with which we’ve been able to achieve this high production rate. Over the course of this study, we’ve improved production from just a few milligrams per liter to over one gram per liter—500 times what we started with,” he added.
If, as a psychonaut, you’re already starting to cheer for this “simple” form of psilocybin, we can certainly understand that. But it is primarily the scientific community that has a major stake in a synthetic form of the compound. Psilocybin is currently being used in clinical trials as a potential treatment for depression, addiction, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Read also: 7 fascinating facts about magic mushrooms and magic truffles!A more stable host
The team will now investigate how to make the bacterium an even better host for psilocybin and is looking forward to the possibility of producing psilocybin at the levels required by the pharmaceutical industry. This has the potential to make research into the therapeutic effects of psilocybin both easier and cheaper to conduct. “We are currently working on improving the genetic background of our E. coli strain to make it a more stable and efficient host for biosynthesis,” Jones explains in an interview.
Pharmaceutical-grade psilocybin is currently a fairly “expensive” substance. Recent research showed that one milligram of high-quality psilocybin costs nearly 2 euros to produce when grown from magic mushrooms. This synthetic and cheaper psilocybin could therefore open many doors, the researchers believe.
