Agricultural bio-engineering to alter chemical yield?

[Nagelfar]

Does anybody have any information on the viability of or instances of this? I read a possibly spurious story about a scientist making THC oranges, but I'm not even looking for anything so dramatic.

Maybe an example of any kind of chemical structure (potentially recreational or not) being put into a strain of plant that didn't before have it naturally, or even accounts to the increase of an innate chemical substance by magnitudes via engineering, plant cloning, etc.

I'm looking for good published sourcing if possible.

 

[The Monkey Mantra]

Making a plant create proteins is easy - you just stick the gene in, and voila. DNA translates DIRECTLY into proteins.

Making the plant create chemicals? Wow. That's a complex mix of repressors, promoters, their respective proteins, and a complex interaction of all the enzymes necessary for each step in the synthesis. They'd all have to be carefully regulated, too. Good luck.

 

[bcuzZ]

I wouldn´t use plants, as it´s much harder to modify eukaryonts(unless you know how to use virus-vehicles). Stick with well known prokaryots like E.coli or for example the genus of clostridia which were used to produce aceton and butanol industrially in WWII. The problem is, that you can´t just transform the "thc-gene" into the cell e.g via a plasmid/bacteriophage, as the biosynthesis of thc or other chemicals isn´t a one step route and many factors are involved.
The easiest way may be the modification of existing metabolic routes or the combination of them ( see one-step Vitamin C fermentation ). You could easily produce amphetamin with phenylalanin as a substrate if you knew which enzymes you have to transform into your producer.

I think that plants react more sensitive to alterations of their chemistry, as a often-used industrial e.coli producer strain. However plants/yeasts/insect cell´s are the first choice if you want to produce proteins which need proper posttranslational modification ( correct folding, addition of carbonhydrates,S-S-bridges,etc)

DNA translates DIRECTLY into proteins.

Unfortunatly it´s not thaaaaat directly ( prä-mrna->splicing->mrna->translation->posttranslational processing (ER,Golgi)->(secretion)

 

[Hammilton]

Yeah, it'd be a major pain in the ass trying to get a plant to do something like this. Having a plant that produced a protein, not as difficult, but not simple either.

With things like E. Coli and such, it's much more doable. Actually, as many are showing "doable at home" is not at all a stretch. With these sorts of organisms, introducing a vector with the appropriate genes inserted is fine: as the oranism replicates, the vector is copied as well.

However, getting something complicated like THC definitely won't be easy, and will probably take years of work. Might be worth it, but with good pot available for less than 40 bucks for 3.5 grams, I don't see it anytime soon.

I'm working on something along these lines right now, just barely into the buying phase, though.

 

[MurphyClox]

...this thread reminds me of some recent discussion...elsewhere...

Anyway. As Monkey Mantra said before (and he's right IMO), transferring a complete biosynthesis-pathway into a different organism is some quite laborious task and anything but trivial. Transferring the DNA for a single protein is far easier.

Sticking with the idea of expressing THC in an organism different than Cannabis sativa, I would recommend to start with closely related species, like hops (Humulus lupulus). This one would be expected to share some biochemical properties with hemp and, therefore, tolerate the manipulation much easier than an unrelated species.

- Murphy

 

[bcuzZ]

Sticking with the idea of expressing THC in an organism different than Cannabis sativa, I would recommend to start with closely related species, like hops (Humulus lupulus). This one would be expected to share some biochemical properties with hemp and, therefore, tolerate the manipulation much easier than an unrelated species.

- Murphy

A transfected lupulus, producing thc ! i wonder why nature hasn´t tought about that :D . This crop would definately give an interesting beer-experience
of course your idea would simplify the project, but nevertheless it would still cause unproportional effort just to end up with thc. and as you know it´s not the only psychoactive compound in hanf.