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DMT's Widespread presence in plantlife?

well 5meo dmt for me from a now non existant japanese dragon site always smelt like grape hubba bubba chewing gum when smoked for me and my mates. Never had just Dmt.

Is it fact or fiction that the brain releases DMT when you die. I read it somewhere, it would explain the pure whitelight if u came back to life.
ii just looked back at a previous post and it answered this question.
DMT is also found in several plant species aint it.
 
I don't think there is any way to test the thought that DMT is released upon death or near-death experiences.

And it's a bit of an understatement to say that it's found in "several" species of plants. Did you read the OP??
 
I didn't understand what exactly do you want to know...
You want to know why it's so present in the plantæ kingdom?
Maybe producing it as a byproduct in metabolism is purely a coincidence I don't buy that antifungal thing at all.....
 
^You'd be hard pressed to find things plants, or any creature, produces "just for the hell of it" or even as a strange byproduct. It's just not in line with being efficient in a competitive environment. Especially at the high levels DMT can be found in.
Why do you think it's not antifungal? Psilocybes may produce it for this reason as well, to deter other fungi from trying to eat them while they are still sporulating
 
I was most interested in knowing if it was present as a metabolite or byproduct of Auxin production.

If it exists as an antifungal, I'd expect there to be a pretty direct route to produce it.
 
sure, methylate tryptamine twice, which is easily produced by decarboxylation of tryptophan, an Amino Acid, ubiquitous
 
But do we know that this is the way it happens? I suppose it'd probably be pretty plant specific.

But then again, don't most (all?) plants produce Auxin? If it was a metabolic thing, we'd probably see it in all of them.
 
Get out them old expression vectors, time to clone some N-methyl aminotransferase!!!!
 
DMT is ubiquitous in plants for the same reason serotonin is ubiquitous in animals (all the way down to the lowly aplisia): evolutionary chance.

And the reason why plants make psychedelics is to poison us, and, hopefully, prevent us from eating them, not to make us see God.
 
there is a serious lack of understanding about evolution here...

yes, the acquisition of the ability to make DMT is by chance. but they will not keep producing it if there is no reason, let alone make it in very high levels and concentrate it in certain tissues without good cause.

humans don't make serotonin for the hell of it, it is an essential neurotransmitter that, while the functions could be performed by any other molecule, is a metabolically easy product with a unique shape and essential function in higher brains. serotonin is not made by chance anymore.

I can grow all sorts of fungi in sterile conditions, anyone want to send me some DMT/psilocin to check for anti-fungal properties? I promise to put BL ADD on the publication authors :) I'm interested in this, does anyone know of desert plant that produces DMT? I can't think of any organisms in super dry areas that produce DMT/modified DMT, besides the toads.

Ham-I'm pretty sure all higher plants use auxin, but this doesn't really have anything to do with DMT. Yea, there are lots of indolic compounds around, but the pathway is almost certainly from tryptophan->tryptamine->NMT->DMT. Just because a lot of plants can doesn't mean all plants will...yeast can live by making booze for energy but that doesn't mean shitake, humans, or hippopotamuses can...(apparently hippopotami isn't the proper term, who knew?)

Has it been shown at all why ergots produce ergoloids?
 
apparently I'm wrong, the final enzyme is miraclase http://www.thechemblog.com/?p=37

it seems no one really knows, but actually the auxin pathway starts @ tryptamine which is oxidized, etc, etc. so they definitely do share some similarity, which is more likely the reason so many plants have the ability to make DMT. convergent evolution I imagine, not a common ancestral pathway
 
Hehe ... miricalase. :)

Many phalaris species are known to produce gramine in addition to N,N-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and 5-OH-DMT. It’s possible that the same N-methyltransferase enzyme does the dimethylation. Or if not, they almost certainly have a recent common ancestor. Here's some interesting stuff I dug up (see below). It seems tryptamine itself has been mentioned as an antifungal. That gives more weight to my theory. Okay, it's about time I get back to work!

N-Methyltransferase involved in gramine biosynthesis in barley: cloning and characterization. Larsson KA, Zetterlund I, Delp G, Jonsson LM. 1: Phytochemistry. 2006 Sep;67(18):2002-8. Epub 2006 Aug 22.

Plants defend themselves against microorganisms and
insects by constitutive and induced defenses, many of them
involving secondary metabolites. The indole alkaloid gramine
occurs in reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea)
and in barley (Hordeum vulgare). In the former grass, consumption
of gramine can adversely affect ruminant performance,
whereas in barley, gramine has received attention
mainly as a proposed defense compound, especially against
aphids (Zu´n˜iga et al., 1985, 1988; Zu´n˜iga and Corcuera,
1986; Kanehisa et al., 1990). Moreover, it has been
reported that infestation by the greenbug (Schizaphis graminum),
(Velozo et al., 1999), pruning, or inoculation with
the powdery mildew fungi increased the gramine content in
barley leaves (Matsuo et al., 2001).

Gramine increase associated with rapid and transient systemic resistance in barley seedlings induced by mechanical and biological stresses. Matsuo H, Taniguchi K, Hiramoto T, Yamada T, Ichinose Y, Toyoda K, Takeda K, Shiraishi T. Plant Cell Physiol. 2001 Oct;42(10):1103-11.

Diverse antifungal compounds were reported to exist in barley, that
were characterized as hordatin (Stoessl 1967), p-coumaroylagmatine
(Stoessl 1965), p-coumaroylhydroxyagmatine (von Ropenack et al. 1998),
tryptamine (Miyagawa et al. 1994), thionins (Bohlmann et al. 1988),
gramine (Wippich and Wink 1985), pathogenesis-related proteins
such as chitinase and β-1,3-glucanase (Leah et al. 1991),
ribosome-inactivating protein (Reinbothe et al. 1994), and lipid transfer
proteins (Molina et al. 1993).
 
I posted some info on DMT and phalaris grass that kind of goes along with the anti-fungal theory.

This posted info was taken from Mycotopia.net from the user name Phalaris-old
http://forums.mycotopia.net/botanic...s/18186-phalaris-grass-canary-reed-grass.html

- Location seems to be everything with Phalaris. One batch that was harvested from a roadside yielded almost nothing. While Phalaris harvested from shady, low creeks and swamps yielded very high. (Average of 1.5 Gram from 1 KG of dried, ground grass, which is good according to me , hell the grass is free and Naptha is very cheap. . . )

- Experiments with up to 8 Naptha extractions were successful. What can I say, the bottom layer just keeps cranking out alkaloids, even months later (?) which leaves me to believe that the typical A/B method needs much improvement. I nearly threw out that sludge in the bottom, until I evap'ed it and rinsed it weeks later after 6 or more extractions and found the smell of DMT very stong in there and rinsing it with toulene and ammonia makes more crystals. . (I'm guessing here is where, the 5meo-DMT and the oh-DMT are isolated in more concentrated forms.)

- The first naptha wash yielded the clearest and best crystals with any second wash or recrystalization . . it was quite pure crystals, but it did give the 'cardiac distress' effect in anyone who tried it. (Traces of oh-dmt. . )

- I notice the effects of 5Mmeo-DMT (and oh-DMT) more than pure DMT with Phalaris extractions in this region. (Northern Ontario)

*** Note: Phalaris picked right after a heavy reainfall, yielded the most alkaloids!!!! This is when sheep die, right after the heavy rain and they wander off to find new grass growth, like phalaris. --- Long drought - then sudden rain = BIG Alkaloid jump and a real concern for any livestock farmer . . !

This was all Phalaris Arendundicae
 
Examples of other antifungal alkaloids from medicinal species also included a β-carboline-, a tryptamine- and two phenylethylamine-derived alkaloids from the aerial parts and roots of Cyathobasis fruticulosa (Bunge) Aellen (Chenopodiaceae),149 and haloxylines A and B, new piperidine alkaloids from the chloroform extract of Haloxylon salicornium L. (Chenopodiaceae), which displayed antifungal potentials.

ARKIVOC 2007 (vii) 116-145
ISSN 1424-6376 Page 116 ©ARKAT
Active antifungal substances from natural sources
Maria José Abad, María Ansuategui, and Paulina Bermejo*

I have no idea what that journal really is, but its easy to find on google.

Based on their effect on the infection behavior of Magnaporthe grisea, indole-related compounds were classified into three groups. The first group, including tryptophan, indole-3-butyric acid, indole-3-pyruvic acid, and indole-3-acetamide, did not inhibit infection behavior such as spore germination, appressorium formation, or infection hypha formation in M. grisea. The second, including indole acetic acid, indole-3-acetonitrile, oxindole, and tryptamine inhibited all stages of infection behaviors in a dose-dependent manner. The third, including gramine and indole, did not inhibit spore germination or appressorium formation, whereas it did inhibit infection hypha formation in a dose-dependent manner. These results suggest that endogenous or exogenously applied indole-related compounds in the second and third groups may contribute to protection in blast-susceptible plants such as rice and barley.

Effects of some indole-related compounds on the infection behavior of Magnaporthe grisea
Makoto Ueno1, Junichi Kihara2, Yuichi Honda3 and Sakae Arase2
Journal of General Plant Pathology
196-199 Thursday, June 09, 2005

Patent for carbinols as antifungals

It is interesting to note that one of the less widely studied species of Banisteriopsis, B. muricata was found to contain an equal number of active chemical constituents to B. caapi. The two lesser studied Banisteriopsis species, B. muricata and B. martiana share a compound that is not present in B. caapi and may warrant further study. The prepared Ayahuasca mixture exhibited anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties. This may be of great consequence to the physical level of the cleansing Ayahuasca provides as a purgative, tying into the complete “mind, body, and spirit” cleansing process.

http://labs.plantbio.cornell.edu/cubl/emanv4p19.html

I'm curious if a mechanism has been determined, considering how close animals are to fungi. I also really think that psilocin may have some of these same features and be the real reason for it's production in mushrooms.
 
Plants have evolved to produce DMT because the causes and conditions were conducive to doing so. Nothing more, nothing less.:)
 
^ again, that's not how evolution works in the long run. there has to be an advantage for it.
 
Ham-milton said:
^ again, that's not how evolution works in the long run. there has to be an advantage for it.
Click to expand...
But we aren't looking at the longrun, how do we known if these plants were left untouched if they would evolve to loose the DMT anabolic pathways? The answer is we don't.

At any rate, a possible evolutionary advantage is that it is now subject to study and can possibly be propgated by researchers planting seeds in their local communities
 
Yes, we are looking at the long run by the fact that we can see numerous plants, mostly, if lf not all higher plants (angiosperms) across numerous phylogeny that produce a compound in high levels. As plants have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and the ancestoral plants (mosses, bryophytes) don't produce DMT, we can say that the evolution of the DMT pathway has been advantageous to certain plants in moist environments and hence their ancestors keep on making it. The pathway has been around so long now, and the species producing it so successful, that the plants make it in large quantities and store it. A young pathway is usually promiscuous (not seen in this case because of the simplicity of the molecules) or the products are only made in trace amounts. Or only a few plants have the ability to make it.

Look at peyote. It makes hundreds of alkaloids in trace amounts and mescaline is only found in a few other species. So either mescaline isn't that effective, or is a new pathway, for whatever it does. And it has tried/is trying lots of other compounds in the mean time. So this pathway is young and still trying to find the best suite to serve whatever purpose it does.

Obviously this is inductive reasoning, but it is all we can go on in evolution longer than the lifetime of bacteria/flys. You can certainly say that the pathway may be lost because DMT becomes useless as fungi grow to become immune to it, but you can't say that the presence of DMT isn't advantageous, or hasn't been advantageous, in the long term (millions of years at the minimum).
 
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