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Simple plant cross-breeding

Doubtful. Hops and cannabis can't be crossed effectively either. Plant breeding doesn't really work that way.

Otherwise I'm sure you'd be seeing P. viridis x Coffee arabica. A general Rule Of Thumb is that once you're outside a genetic family it's a lot harder to cross... for instance you can "cross breed" Mentha spicata (spearmint) and M. aquatica (watermint) to get M. x piperita (peppermint). Or you could cross the Citrus spp. varieties. Maybe you could manage to do Mitragyna speciosa x Mitragyna parvifola or something, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

Cross breeding, pruning and grafting, and plant genetics is not "simple" though Nature makes it seem that way sometimes.
 
Breeding aside, you have to remember that these alkaloids are made through complex enzymatic pathways. So you'd have to basically make sure the resulting plant got both pathways, uniterrupted. It would probably be easier to just put the genes necessary into some carrier plant.
 
Um. The only thing I really thought would be neat and feasible would be knocking out the ketoreductase in the ephedrine plant so that the plant yielded methcathinone instead of ephedrine... The ketoeductase itself is yet to be identify, but maybe a nice paper could be made out of finding the sequence, cloning it, knocking it out, and doing some mutagenesis work. But, yeah, transferring a whole biosynthetic pathway? Good luck, you'll need it.

I'm going to close this thread since OP's premise is kind of absurd.
 
nuke said:
I'm going to close this thread since OP's premise is kind of absurd.
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Never got around to it, huh nuke?

I actually have something viable in relatively the same vein. Could heavy specifically chosen additives to the soil induce different metabolic pathways for plant alkaloid development? e.g. I've read Papaver somniferum actually has trace amounts of hydromorphone, and it's bio-synthesis is similar to its other active metabolites; would enriching (read polluting) the soil with a large amount of a specific chemical alter its yield while not specifically harming the plant otherwise? (for example, making the primary alkaloid hydromorphone rather than morphine/codeine etc.)

My original post came about because I remember reading about THC oranges and their seeds that were exchanged around college campuses some years back supposedly originating from a rogue teacher's pet project.
 
Nagelfar said:
Never got around to it, huh nuke?

I actually have something viable in relatively the same vein. Could heavy specifically chosen additives to the soil induce different metabolic pathways for plant alkaloid development? e.g. I've read Papaver somniferum actually has trace amounts of hydromorphone, and it's bio-synthesis is similar to its other active metabolites; would enriching (read polluting) the soil with a large amount of a specific chemical alter its yield while not specifically harming the plant otherwise? (for example, making the primary alkaloid hydromorphone rather than morphine/codeine etc.)

My original post came about because I remember reading about THC oranges and their seeds that were exchanged around college campuses some years back supposedly originating from a rogue teacher's pet project.
Click to expand...

Sort of in the same vein, I remember hearing about experiments with seeding Psilocybe subtrates with various tryptamines to produce modified (4-PO) versions of those tryptamines.
 
My original post came about because I remember reading about THC oranges and their seeds that were exchanged around college campuses some years back supposedly originating from a rogue teacher's pet project.
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As far as I know this is urban legend. Cannabis laced produce would take off like no tomorrow in certain parts of the world were it a thing that could be done.
 
Aren't they all, though?

The lack of any such THC oranges in DEA microgram journals from the period stated (1998 onwards) supports the theory that THC oranges are a load of crap.
 
sekio said:
Aren't they all, though?

The lack of any such THC oranges in DEA microgram journals from the period stated (1998 onwards) supports the theory that THC oranges are a load of crap.
Click to expand...

Couldn't the method given be verified?

Biochem 101:
How to design a cannabis equivilent [sic] citrus plant

Step One:
Biochemically isolate all the required enzymes for the production of THC.

Step Two:
Perform N-terminal sequencing on isolated enzymes, design degenerate PCR (polymerase chain reaction) primers and amplify the genes.

Step Three:
Clone genes into an agrobacterial vector by introducing the desired pieces of DNA into a plasmid containing a transfer or T-DNA. The mixture is transformed into Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a gram negative bacterium.

Step Four:
Use the Agrobacterium tumefaciens to infect citrus plants after wounding. The transfer DNA will proceed to host cells by a mechanism similar to conjugation. The DNA is randomly integrated into the host genome and will be inherited.
Click to expand...
 
It sounds very valid, but the problem is that Step One has not been carried out - indeed, only recently has the C. sativa genome even been sequenced. It's going to be a long time before we will be producing synthetic THC synthase enzymes in the lab, or transfecting anything for the DNA for said enzymes.

Again I must stress the lack of any concrete proof here. The Cartels would be all over this shit were it an actual thing that could be done. But there is just no evidence that anyone has produced a psychoactive orange (aside from tasting amazing).

While we're on the masturbatory biochemical binge, I want to see lemons that produce miraculin, the taste modifying protien from miracle berry that turns sour to sweet. I know that there's sweet lemons already that lack the high acidity of real lemons, but still, it would be a hilarious experiment. Or limes - I love limes, and sweet limes would be like candy.
 
sekio said:
It sounds very valid, but the problem is that Step One has not been carried out - indeed, only recently has the C. sativa genome even been sequenced. It's going to be a long time before we will be producing synthetic THC synthase enzymes in the lab, or transfecting anything for the DNA for said enzymes.

Again I must stress the lack of any concrete proof here. The Cartels would be all over this shit were it an actual thing that could be done. But there is just no evidence that anyone has produced a psychoactive orange (aside from tasting amazing).

While we're on the masturbatory biochemical binge, I want to see lemons that produce miraculin, the taste modifying protien from miracle berry that turns sour to sweet. I know that there's sweet lemons already that lack the high acidity of real lemons, but still, it would be a hilarious experiment. Or limes - I love limes, and sweet limes would be like candy.
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Would that not hide potentially very enamel ruining acidity?
 
Seems odd that Florida State University has no information whatsoever relating to this genius member of their faculty on their website. Really, a little critical thinking, people. Obvious hoax is obvious.
 
That premise is absurd and it is most certainly a hoax. Generally variants of species can be crossed with ease (species var x species var) and sometimes inter-genus crosses can be done. Like has been stated, there are so many complex pathways that need to mesh up. Think about it. Otherwise we wouldn't have so many distinct varieties of plants through evolution.

And I thought the traces of hydromorphone in the poppies were due to an extraneous bacteria? Could be wrong....
 
amanitadine said:
And I thought the traces of hydromorphone in the poppies were due to an extraneous bacteria? Could be wrong....
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This would be more interesting to my case. Infectious parasitic treatment of plants altering yield. We'd have both the direction of plant breeding *along with* bacterial breeding to optimize yield. The generations being so quick in bacterium as to be a rather favorable situation in my opinion.
 
sekio said:
It sounds very valid, but the problem is that Step One has not been carried out - indeed, only recently has the C. sativa genome even been sequenced. It's going to be a long time before we will be producing synthetic THC synthase enzymes in the lab, or transfecting anything for the DNA for said enzymes.
Click to expand...

I remember discussing this THC oranges hoax with my uni professors years ago, for the time it was obviously implausible but ironically now we are not far off the point where this could be possible. The reason for using citrus fruits is that one of the syntheses of THC uses limonene which is found in citrus plants in large amounts...so theoretically less new enzymes need to be introduced because half the biosynthesis has been done already. Still seems a bit implausible, but in ten years time, who knows...
 
mad_scientist said:
but in ten years time, who knows...
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In March 2010, researchers from the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary published an article in Nature Chemical Biology about their discovery of two enzymes and their encoding genes, thebaine 6-O-demethylase (T6ODM) and codeine O-demethylase (CODM), involved in morphine biosynthesis derived from the opium poppy. The enzymes were identified as non-heme dioxygenases, and were isolated using functional genomics. Codeine O-demethylase produces the enzyme that converts codeine into morphine.
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Genetic secrets of poppies' painkillers unlocked. March 15, 2010 The Canadian Press
 
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