E.coli genetically engineered to produce psilocybin

[F.U.B.A.R.]

Found this article quite interesting:

Scientists Engineered a Bacterium That Poops Out Huge Amounts of Psilocybin

Scientists have found a new way to harvest psilocybin, the psychedelic compound typically found in mushrooms.

www.google.com

 

[draculic acid69]

Found this article quite interesting:

Scientists Engineered a Bacterium That Poops Out Huge Amounts of Psilocybin

Scientists have found a new way to harvest psilocybin, the psychedelic compound typically found in mushrooms.

www.google.com

They got yeast and bacteria making all sorts of stuff these days.morphine, ephedrine, now psylocybin, algae making fuels, eventually anything of interest will have a modified yeast, bacteria or virus to produce it.

 

[F.U.B.A.R.]

Bacteria was, is and always will be the dominant form of life on Earth, if not the Universe.

 

[draculic acid69]

Bacteria probably consider humans a virus

 

[S.J.B.]

This is neat but for a molecule as structurally-accessible as psilocybin I doubt it will be cost-competitive with chemical synthesis anytime soon.

 

[draculic acid69]

This is neat but for a molecule as structurally-accessible as psilocybin I doubt it will be cost-competitive with chemical synthesis anytime soon.

Depends what you have to put in the broth.

 

[F.U.B.A.R.]

This is neat but for a molecule as structurally-accessible as psilocybin I doubt it will be cost-competitive with chemical synthesis anytime soon.

According to one article I read (not necessarily the one I posted) it is much more cost effective than synthesis.

 

[vecktor]

This is clever.

I wish researchers would be honest and say they did it because they could and someone paid them to do it rather than making up a whole justification.

The reason psilocybin is not available medically is not anything to do with manufacture it is to do with regulation and prohibition.

There is a claim circulating that pharmaceutical grade psilocybin is 2 USD per mg to synthesize, a lie, the triptans are more complex to manufacture and they are 10 000x cheaper than this supposed psilocybin price, complex triptans are about 100 to 150 USD per Kg for pharmaceutical API grade.

Cultivating fungi and extracting the psilocybin is going to be the absolute cheapest option to get pharmaceutical grade psilocybin, followed by synthesis. An unstable transgenic E coli starting from an unstable expensive feedstock is not going to compete on many levels. The instability will make it very difficult to create a DMF with consistent impurity profiles. This is an academic curiosity.