Physiological role of cannabinoids - in the cannabis plant

[rm-rf]

Physiological role of cannabinoids ** in the cannabis plant **

So, I cant seem to find this with a basic google search: what physiological role do cannabinoids play in the cannabis plant itself? Surely these dont just exist for our medicinal/psychological benefit (or do they?). What functions do they serve to the organism that works so hard to produce them? Im sure this isnt a simple answer, as Im quite knowledgeable on the diverse multifunctional roles of hormones, vitamins, minerals, etc in the human body, so I imagine cellular activity is just as complex in the plant world.

Im really just attempting to sate my curiosity.

 

[Trogdor]

You have to have a certain amount of THC in the stalks, in the strands. THC is the plant's protection from the cold, and the sun. The higher up a mountain you raise hemp, the more and more THC it will produce. Each and every year it will be stronger and stronger and stronger as long as you move up the mountain, 7,000 feet, 10,000. At lower elevations you don't have as high THC percentages anymore in ten or twenty or thirty years. It will be back to normal: 2 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent THC.

- Jack Herer (in an interview with MMJ-News)

 

[HighonLife]

Michal pollen discusses this in depth in his book
"Cannabis ....................the botany of desire" forget the exact name but it is cannabis then something something and the botany of desire

just google that stuff n you will find some interesting reading

 

[rm-rf]

ah interesting, im sure there are more roles than just protection from the environment tho. makes sense i guess.

im sort of got an underlying idea (not sure if a testable hypothesis can be developed really) that a lot of psychoactive producing plants/fungi have either created them symbiotically with mammalian evolution or perhaps even were designed intentfully in a time billions of years before the earth was even cool enough to support life and somehow their code was 'installed' if you will on our planet. its just a wacky idea but i know im not the only one to ponder about it.

so think of it as something along the lines of, cannabis or psilocybe mushrooms contain neurotransmitters not because they chiefly provide some sort of physiological function for the host plant, but to send messages to intelligent life billions of years into the future. these crystals may also play many roles in the plant's physiology, but compared to the role they play in humans (hell, THC has even been proven to kill of mutated, potential cancer cells), the role they play in the plant is not as critical.

 

[Zzyzx]

You have to have a certain amount of THC in the stalks, in the strands. THC is the plant's protection from the cold, and the sun. The higher up a mountain you raise hemp, the more and more THC it will produce. Each and every year it will be stronger and stronger and stronger as long as you move up the mountain, 7,000 feet, 10,000. At lower elevations you don't have as high THC percentages anymore in ten or twenty or thirty years. It will be back to normal: 2 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent THC.

- Jack Herer (in an interview with MMJ-News)

Very interesting. But would that mean that with even better climate control, stronger lights and even a slightly depresurized room you could mimic the high altitude conditions and force the plants into producing more THC ?

 

[ford442]

on a side note - if farmers could grow hemp with a THC % or actual weed - it would be a far better industrial crop than this weak <1%THC kind they are forced to grow - real hemp is what made the first Jeans pants - the ones that have now been tested to be virtually indestructible..

 

[hjj]

ah interesting, im sure there are more roles than just protection from the environment tho. makes sense i guess.


so think of it as something along the lines of, cannabis or psilocybe mushrooms contain neurotransmitters not because they chiefly provide some sort of physiological function for the host plant, but to send messages to intelligent life billions of years into the future. .

lols.
what?did they huddle up with some big secret, and not have a pencil or something to write it down, oh wait, they're plants.

 

[PsyGhost]

Most biologists and botanists are of the opinion that secondary metabolites, and in particular intoxicating ones, are formed in plants as a method of self-defense against predation.

I think that these chemicals are found within the plants because over a period of time and selective pressures of nature, humans and certain plants have evolved with each other. Psychoactive using populations have emerged from non-psychoactive using populations, and as a result our brain chemistry is more linked with psychoactive plants.

 

[inverse_agonist]

This might be a good place to start:

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/cannabis-facts-information/74230-cannabis-repellent-pesticide.html

Someone posted the full text of this paper there:

McPartland, John M. 1997. Cannabis as repellent and pesticide. Journal of the International Hemp Association 4(2): 87-92

It's not particularly focused on cannabis, but this other paper has an interesting take on the issue of why we use plant drugs if they're supposed to be defense mechanisms for the plants:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19233250

Ecology and neurobiology of toxin avoidance and the paradox of drug reward.
Hagen EH, Sullivan RJ, Schmidt R, Morris G, Kempter R, Hammerstein P.
Neuroscience. 2009 Apr 21;160(1):69-84.

 

[thujone]

so it's known that THC is to defend the plant from UV radiation, and I would guess that other CBNs evolved as a response to soil conditions and nutrient access. the reason i guess that is because in the natural world it's not common to find hybrid strains, much less an indica that shares the same soil in the same climate as a sativa.

aside from the compounds that differentiate a sativa from an indica, i'd guess the remaining CBNs are a defense mechanism to keep predators away. as humans have an immense capacity to understand, we value the revelatory nature of drugs and have gotten confident enough to enjoy them in the luxury of safe societies. but ultimately, being inebriated, no matter what species you are (have you see the drunken elephants? funny shit) is a threat to your survival out in the real world.

hence, most animals would avoid eating any plants that bend their senses. obviously that hypothesis doesn't even begin to address the fact that many plants bleed toxins that have great applications in medicine but it's not like the evolutionary process has had enough time to address the trespasses of a single species that started using inedible plants for ointments only a few millenia ago.

 

[maddux91]

I remember two things being mentioned about cannabinoids like THC:

• They protect the plant from UV light
• They make the leaves taste bad so that animals will not eat them

Pretty sure they are both correct.

 

[Chainer]

Very interesting. But would that mean that with even better climate control, stronger lights and even a slightly depresurized room you could mimic the high altitude conditions and force the plants into producing more THC ?

Yes, of course! Stronger lighting and climate control have everything to do with potency, the seed can only get you so far. Obviously nutrition of the plant is important as well.

So far as logical and natural purposes of THC or psychoactive cannabis in weed... you should remember that most naturally found weed is simply hemp, containing low percentages of concentrated THC. The higher percents are grown under unaverage conditions, IE they would not naturally occur with 28% THC strains. I do remember reading that they reason it is produced to is keep animals away from it and protect if from the cold. It is sappy, and helps keep insects away. It also helps the plant deal with colder weather than it likes. To summarize:
Disease Protection
Ultra-violent light protection
Insect repellent

 

[jam uh weezy]

so think of it as something along the lines of, cannabis or psilocybe mushrooms contain neurotransmitters not because they chiefly provide some sort of physiological function for the host plant, but to send messages to intelligent life billions of years into the future. these crystals may also play many roles in the plant's physiology, but compared to the role they play in humans (hell, THC has even been proven to kill of mutated, potential cancer cells), the role they play in the plant is not as critical.

i like this.


does anyone know how thc and other cannabinoids protect the plant from certain environment factors, such as cold, uv light, etc??

 

[DHope]

My first guess would be that they are defense against insects. Imagine what even low THC levels will do to a tiny insect. It's likely that it could even cause death. The other benefits evolved from that. For instance say a plant developed THC against insects and then found itself in a hostile environment where protection against UV light was needed. Having that natural insect repellent all over the leaves makes it resistant to high UV exposure too. Thus the plants with the higher THC content would survive better there also so the environment will then select for higher and higher THC content in that environment.

Even more interesting however is what led people to start smoking it. What ever possessed us to start taking a part of a plant and burning it to inhale it's smoke?

My only surmise would be that we did that for similar reasons cannabis developed THC in the first place. Anyone who has gone camping in the summer knows the dangers and inconvenience of mosquitoes. Put enough smoke in the area and you keep them away but of course you have a smoky campsite. Too much smoke is as bad as mosquitoes but a small amount of smoke is bearable and keeps mosquitoes away. So man started smoking plants to protect against insects. Naturally plants with a built in insect repellent would be better than plants without so people started smoking those and discovered the intoxicating properties of THC.

Wild supposition of course but I can't think of a better theory.

 

[rm-rf]

Most biologists and botanists are of the opinion that secondary metabolites, and in particular intoxicating ones, are formed in plants as a method of self-defense against predation.

Yes Im quite aware of that idea, but I kind of just dont accept it. No basis, it just doesnt make "sense" to me. Especially things like cannabis, psilocybe mushrooms, and mescaline. Sure mescaline grows in conjunction with the harshness of the peyote's environment, but how is something that is so attractive to so many animals a defense mechanism? Dogs, bears, many species of primates, foxes, and a few others im too stoned to remember have all been proven to seek out psychoactive plants for the pleasure of the experience. All mammals are pretty much hard wired to "trip" on psychedelics.

I think that these chemicals are found within the plants because over a period of time and selective pressures of nature, humans and certain plants have evolved with each other. Psychoactive using populations have emerged from non-psychoactive using populations, and as a result our brain chemistry is more linked with psychoactive plants.

I feel as though these plants have an evolutionary history hundreds of millions of years older than humans. Were roughly 4 million years old, with about 2 million years of modern humans. I dont feel weve synced up in such a convenient way. I do believe that plants an animals evolve in a synchronized or symbiotic manner, just not in this particular instance. Besides, evolution is entirely accidental. Evolving chemicals that function as neurotransmitters in a system as complex as a human brain is like suggesting some weird mixture of materials exploded 928,000,000 million years ago, which formed a perfect floppy 5.25" disk containing the boot file for MS DOS 5.0 which I discovered in 1991 and plugged it straight into my computer and hey, it worked!

Ill accept that simple random chance of a protein forming in primordial "ooze" forms into various forms of life billions of years later. I wont accept that these same odds produced a coincidence like this.

And while on that note, it is a suggested and not-unpopular idea that the first strands of dna, or even the first simple proteins or amino acids floated onto Earth from space. Could spores have done the same? Could these simple proteins have been conjured by existences beyond human comprehension, flung into space for the purpose of hitting those few rocks out there with the right conditions to flower them into mobile creatures? Its really not that impossible.

Im not all for suggesting that "ancient aliens bioengineered life on Earth and left us their messages in the form of psychoactive crystals." I am for the idea that its no accident that these organisms contain pieces of information our organisms are meant to consume and dwell on. I know my idea is rather outlandish, and I dont exactly believe it fully, yet its something that if somehow were proven to be true, I wouldnt be surprised.

Even more interesting however is what led people to start smoking it. What ever possessed us to start taking a part of a plant and burning it to inhale it's smoke?

na this one is easy for me to grasp. Coffe isnt, not gonna go there, but a raw coffee bean is one of the nastiest (and hardest to eat) things, so who the hell would think "aw man this tastes liek shit, but I bet boiling it and drinking the water will be cool."

See when you live in a world where every waking moment of your existence is spent trying to find calories while trying to preserve calories, youll taste/cook/sniff/drink anything you come across till you see someone die from it. Perhaps not to the extent of "everything," but its easy to conceive the idea of ancient man or man's predecessors burning plant materials, cooking with plant materials, or doing some action to ingest the materials, and then tying the altered state to the plant. Bug repellent is believable too, but in any event, im sure the psychoactive properties were tied to the plant during basic experimentation as a tool, food source, or whatever.

 

[DHope]

Yes Im quite aware of that idea, but I kind of just dont accept it. No basis, it just doesnt make "sense" to me. Especially things like cannabis, psilocybe mushrooms, and mescaline. Sure mescaline grows in conjunction with the harshness of the peyote's environment, but how is something that is so attractive to so many animals a defense mechanism? Dogs, bears, many species of primates, foxes, and a few others im too stoned to remember have all been proven to seek out psychoactive plants for the pleasure of the experience. All mammals are pretty much hard wired to "trip" on psychedelics.

Some plants have developed characteristics beneficial to animals for the purpose of spreading their seeds. Usually however this is done through the fruit. The flesh of the fruit is good to eat but the seeds are un-digestible and pass through the animal. This provides a vector for spreading the seeds beyond the capabilities of the plant and wraps them in a convenient fertilizer.

It's kind of hard to see this as the reason for the psychoactive properties however. A plant that intoxicates it's seed spreading host isn't going to spread as far as a plant that provides nourishment yet leaves the host mobile to spread seeds.

Some mammals seek out the plants not all. Evolution is all about the welfare of the species. If one plant intoxicates the animal eating it this saves other plants from a like fate. Like someone pointed out above being high might be fun in a sheltered environment it's a completely different thing when you are trying to survive. Any decrease in function when you may need to run from a predator or stalk/kill game is a disadvantage.

I feel as though these plants have an evolutionary history hundreds of millions of years older than humans. Were roughly 4 million years old, with about 2 million years of modern humans. I dont feel weve synced up in such a convenient way. I do believe that plants an animals evolve in a synchronized or symbiotic manner, just not in this particular instance. Besides, evolution is entirely accidental. Evolving chemicals that function as neurotransmitters in a system as complex as a human brain is like suggesting some weird mixture of materials exploded 928,000,000 million years ago, which formed a perfect floppy 5.25" disk containing the boot file for MS DOS 5.0 which I discovered in 1991 and plugged it straight into my computer and hey, it worked!

When a plant or other organism creates a psychoactive compound against a predator or uses it against prey it's a selective process. The plant with the most compound will fare better against it's predator/prey than one without. The compound's effect against any other animal is generally coincidence based on differences and similarities in body chemistry and ability to metabolize the compound. An example would be dogs and grapes. Grapes are good for humans but deadly for dogs. Just a few grapes or small hand full of raisins will kill a dog.

Another example is the Sidney funnel web spider. It's one of the most venomous spiders in the world. It developed a toxin to use on it's preferred prey. As the prey adapted the venom adapted to match. When humans came to Australia (very recently in evolutionary terms) the venom was found to be very toxic to primates yet not toxic to other mammals.

Evolution isn't a random process. It's a natural selection for traits that provide an advantage in competition with other organisms. Mutation however is a random process. Plants and animals mutate. Those mutations may be adaptive (good) or non-adaptive (bad). Evolution selects for the adaptive traits and selects against the non-adaptive.

na this one is easy for me to grasp. Coffe isnt, not gonna go there, but a raw coffee bean is one of the nastiest (and hardest to eat) things, so who the hell would think "aw man this tastes liek shit, but I bet boiling it and drinking the water will be cool."

See when you live in a world where every waking moment of your existence is spent trying to find calories while trying to preserve calories, youll taste/cook/sniff/drink anything you come across till you see someone die from it. Perhaps not to the extent of "everything," but its easy to conceive the idea of ancient man or man's predecessors burning plant materials, cooking with plant materials, or doing some action to ingest the materials, and then tying the altered state to the plant. Bug repellent is believable too, but in any event, im sure the psychoactive properties were tied to the plant during basic experimentation as a tool, food source, or whatever.

That makes me think of the movie "Caveman" with Ringo Star. I want one of those prehistoric pot plants with the berries.

Initially we probably relied on instinct eating traditional foods. As our brain developed we started experimenting with other foods during famines. That's probably where our relationship with psychoactive plants started.

I can see eating them but snorting and smoking is a different matter. Neither one puts calories in your belly. That's why I thought of smoking as an insect defense. I used to work as a white water guide. That's where I started smoking. Mosquitoes were killer my first year. Someone suggested I try smoking a cigarette and it worked. With experimentation I found that blowing smoke on my bare skin also helped. Some other guides who had worked a lot of rivers also said that throwing wild hemp on the fire worked well also. Never got to try it myself since there wasn't much wild hemp in that state.

Another possibility is that we came to use psychoactive plants first as medicines and ceremonial aids. Look at how many ethnogens have ceremonial or medicinal uses. I think cannabis would be a good example of that. Or even more likely it was a combination of reasons. Throw it in the fire and it keeps the bugs from eating you alive. Smoke a bud and you commune with the spirits. Make a tea and it will cure what ails you. We are still finding new uses for cannabis so why not consider a multi use theory?

 

[greenmeanies]

bitter plants are bitter because they contain alkaloids, aromatic herbs have scent due to their resins and chemicals, toxic frogs are pretty because they want to be; all would be further investigated by anybody looking for medicines (and poisons) in the wild

 

[PsyGhost]

It's not particularly focused on cannabis, but this other paper has an interesting take on the issue of why we use plant drugs if they're supposed to be defense mechanisms for the plants:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19233250

Ecology and neurobiology of toxin avoidance and the paradox of drug reward.
Hagen EH, Sullivan RJ, Schmidt R, Morris G, Kempter R, Hammerstein P.
Neuroscience. 2009 Apr 21;160(1):69-84.

Nice find there.

It is definitely possible that humans have evolved to counter-exploit plant metabolites, or that plants have evolved to counter the counter-exploiting human behavior.

It is possible that these chemicals act as a method of dispersal or reproduction for the plant. In the same way that nectar attracts bees for pollination, or sugary aril-coated seeds drive ants to carry them long distances.

Cannabis rarely exists in wild collections any more, as almost all wild collections can be traced to naturalization. This is the result of human traffic across the globe over at least the last 10,000 years. Humans have definitely dispersed cannabis and allowed the plant to have access to a larger habitat. This in turn helps increase the plants fitness as it can then adapt over time to various locales.

These are all beneficial traits for the plant to have THC. The THC is then selected by humans over this 10,000 year span which has increased the content to the levels of today.

 

[thujone]

first, let's consider that most drugs are derived from toxic alkaloids. the drugs in herb are derived from healing terpenes. the fact that nothing in cannabis is toxic makes the counter-exploit theory a moot point in this topic.

a better, far more plausible theory, imho, is that drugs (let's just stick to cannabis for the moment) mimic hormones in order to deceive us. consider that our sense receptors are so finely-tuned that humans perceive with more accuracy than any other creature, making us harder to deceive. also consider that deception is common in the animal kingdom and an evolutionary trait of many creatures.

plants, with their limited mobility, aren't able to deceive through the same means as animals so they instead take a shortcut right into the brain and fuck with the sensors right at the hub, altering HOW we feel like hormones do for the purpose of making us feel good about our senses going all wonky; something that would probably be otherwise alarming. hence, psychoactive plants are using deception as a defense mechanism.

but that's only where the rabbit-hole begins with this theory. let's look at the fact that the function of cannabinoids is so complete that there's no question the plant would have gone extinct by the flames of our lighters had we not brought it, a common WEED, indoors and begun to cultivate it.

it's even apt to say that herb owes it's mind-boggling array of subspecies variety to the mendelian style phenotype favoritism practiced by all botanists. here we have a plant that alters nothing else but the chemical composition of its defense mechanism each time a human fucks with it.

in essence, herb evolves to OUR needs far more readily than humans could have ever evolved to herb's constantly-altering composition. i'd like to conclude by posing an infinitely significant question: how would herb know how to reformulate cannabinoids without humans at the helm, constantly cultivating; to keep us from otherwise extincting the plant and to select the varieties we want to see survive?

 

[PsyGhost]

marijuana wasnt cultivated indoors until the past 40 or so years though. It was never in a threat of extinction by human over harvesting. On the contrary, its only as prominent across the globe because of human intervention.

Its only a "common weed" because it has been moved around the world for 10,000 years.