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why do plants produce alkaloids?

Worms/fruit flys for cocaine or alcohol. I normally get flamed for this one, but a worm (with a total of like 1000 brain cells), or a fruit fly (with maybe 10-100 times that), doesn't hav a conciousness, or even anything resembling one, and hence can -like- anything

Does the planet have a consciousness tho? Like the Gaia idea? Perhaps that's the reason these alkaloids have evolved - natures means of communicating with mammals?
 
I would say not, because of many reasons, the largest of which is that a plant has nothing to gain from the expensive production that is a highly active brain-like structure to produce conciousness, and hence, it is a trait that would get selected against.
 
Re: Design through evolution

fastandbulbous said:
Sometimes it was just a needless evolution. Perhaps the lifeforms would be fine or better off without these mutations

If it was a pointless exercise to produce these compounds, the plant with the mutation to produce them would have become extinct. This is because anything that causes an organism to use up resources to produce something useless is at an evolutionary disadvantage to the ones that don't, and natural selection is a very efficient, but utterly ruthless means of selecting the organism that is best for a certain enviroment. Even the slightest disadvantage will take its toll in the end (that's why you don't see us sharing the globe with neaderthal man)
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Men. Have. Nipples.

There are innumerable genetic traits that are pointless. Often, they served a purpose to another species earlier in former species's evolution. For example, whales have unnecessary bones in their fins because of the handbones the land-dwelling mammals it evolved from had. Thinking that chemicals don't exist in certain species because they don't serve the life form in any significant way is stupid.
 
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^ Thats called vestigialization, and not really applicable to the current topic, as I doubt we could show that these plants ancestors produced these chemicals for a specific reason that is no longer applicable.
 
Monkeys will purposely eat fermenting fruits to get drunk. Not quite the same thing, i guess... but along those lines.
 
I wonder if any animal has ever figured out that if you eat enough opium poppies you can get moderately high? Or that if you chew enough coca leaves, you'll also catch a mild buzz?
 
^^^ Some people argue that Opium and Cocaine taste really bad and that's really their job - to make the plant undesireable to eat.

If that were true, why then does the plant produce such compounds when there are simpler, more efficient compounds that make it taste bad?

I am sure if an animal enjoys the opiate buzz, it will keep on eating. I, for one, have found that I developed a liking for the taste of poppies as time went on, because I cameto associate that taste with opiates. Classical pavlovian conditioning, and will work even better on other Animals.

The idea that these alkaloids are there just to make a plant undesireable to eat is very limted to me.

There are so many questions we can ask to expand on the original question. Why does Psilocybe Cubensis produce 4-HO-DMT, and not 3-HO-DMT, or 4-AcO-DMT, or 2C-D for that matter? Why does this particular mushroom produce that much of this particular alkaloid? So many questions that science cannot give convenient answers to.
 
Animals and reward

There are lemurs on Madegascar that will grab certain millipedes and nibble at them, to annoy the millipede and get it to produce a toxin that it uses for defence. It just so happens that the toxin produces a high for the lemur (from the film of it happening that I've seen, it looks like the effect on lemurs is comparable to what opiates produce in humans).

The fact that plants produce compounds that happen to be active in us, is just fortuitous; they will serve some purpose in the plant that has allowed it an advantage over other members of it's species that don't produce it. What that advantage is, in a lot of cases, we don't know, but it will be an advantage otherwise natural selection would have "weeded out" that characteristic.

Animals that are slower than others at eliminating useless characteristics are also at a disadvantage. Vestigal structures like nipples in men is just "a work in progress", as physical characteristics take thousands of generations to eliminate - it can't just happen overnight
 
Why does Psilocybe Cubensis produce 4-HO-DMT, and not 3-HO-DMT, or 4-AcO-DMT, or 2C-D for that matter?
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I didn't know that it did, but all of those compounds can be formed from preety standard metabolic enzymes that even we have. You just need to bring them and tryptamine all together. and in a relatively undifferentiated spcies like fungi, that probably happens quite a bit.
 
The enzyme that slaps that hydroxy group on there does not discriminate. In theory, I suppose you could get 4-ho-dipt, by putting DIPT in the substrate, assuming that having the tryptamine, typtophan, or intermediate DMT did not fuck it up somehow
 
BilZ0r said:
I didn't know that it did
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4-HO-DMT = Psilocin, no? :)

all of those compounds can be formed from preety standard metabolic enzymes that even we have. You just need to bring them and tryptamine all together. and in a relatively undifferentiated spcies like fungi, that probably happens quite a bit.
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The enzyme that slaps that hydroxy group on there does not discriminate. In theory, I suppose you could get 4-ho-dipt, by putting DIPT in the substrate, assuming that having the tryptamine, typtophan, or intermediate DMT did not fuck it up somehow
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I am aware of these things, but explaining the mechanism of production hardly provides an answer to why these particular alkaloids are being produced in this particular plant at these particular quantities.

That is, unless you're both implying that these species just happened to mutate the right enzyme and just happened to come in contact with the right substrate (ie. Tryptamine) in a very wild coincidence?
 
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All mutations just happen. They are random changes. Thats pretty much the definition of mutation.

How else would they have gotten such enzymes? Mutation is the raw material of natural selection.

As far as why they produce them... we really don't know, as least we don't know why for all organisms. Perhaps they are defensive (or attractive, for that matter), perhaps they are a by product of another process, or perhaps they are formed when 'unintended' chemicals go through a metabolic pathway with an entirely other purpose. They could be a part of an environmental relationship we don't know about. They may serve some other purpose, and just happen to be drugs in man. ITs possible that some of the organisms evolved a metabolic pathway to do a task in one area of the world, and then moved into another area where different chemicals were taken up that made this happen totally unintentionally.

We really don't know. Probably wasn't the work of aliens or for the spiritual enlightenment of the plant, though.
 
I find the spiritual idea much more plausible than the "cance mutation" idea ;). There is a self contradiction there. As we learned before in this thread, a mutation without an advantage will cause the species to be selected against, right?

So therefore, even if this is a mutation, I do not think it "just happened". I think the production of these alkaloids have a definite purpose, and one that science will never find.

I do not think that DMT is a neurotransmitter. Nor does science think so, as far as I know. Yet it exists in countless species. And its levels are elevated when people are having mystical experiences. Yet it does not seem to be very different than Serotonin in its binding actions. I personally think this whole neurotransmitter business is total b/s, but thats just my opinion. Point is, I think these compounds exist as mediators between the physical brain and the non-physical mind, and through and beyond. Again, only my opinion.

I just find it fascinating how people who use psychedelics still consider the primitive mundane science to be an authority...
 
Originally posted by Jamshyd
I find the spiritual idea much more plausible than the "cance mutation" idea ;). There is a self contradiction there. As we learned before in this thread, a mutation without an advantage will cause the species to be selected against, right?


You didn't follow anything I said. All mutations are by chance. There is no mutation that did not occur by chance. A mutation is a random change. A random change is a change that happens by chance.


So therefore, even if this is a mutation, I do not think it "just happened".


Then you have no understanding of one of the most basic of biology concepts.


I do not think that DMT is a neurotransmitter. Nor does science think so, as far as I know. Yet it exists in countless species. And its levels are elevated when people are having mystical experiences.


Prove it (about the elevated levels).

I personally think this whole neurotransmitter business is total b/s, but thats just my opinion.


You are of course entitled to your opinion, even if it is founded on a lack of knowledge or understanding.


I just find it fascinating how people who use psychedelics still consider the primitive mundane science to be an authority.


You don't seem to understand what science is, either. Science is no authority. It is a way of looking at things, a method of trying to determine how and why. It is a progress acheived through consensus and repetition. Science is pretty much always primitive relative to what will be learned in the future. One must be willing to accept that drastic changes in thought might be neccesary. I don't understand how people who take psychedelics cant understand that.

A scientist has no hardcoded beliefs on what s/he studies. I might not be so cold to the idea of alkaloids being spiritual vessels of some sort of a plant if it made any sense, or had any validity. Show me some evidence, and I'll listen.
 
Jamshyd: LOL, I though you were saying P/ Cubensis synthesized ALL of those chems...

I do not think that DMT is a neurotransmitter. Nor does science think so, as far as I know. Yet it exists in countless species. And its levels are elevated when people are having mystical experiences.
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I'll go further to say 'proove it', I'll say that the original person who said that was a lier.

Also, DMT is VERY different to serotonin in its binding actions.

I started writing a big reply to your statement "the whole neurotransmitter business is total b/s". I don't think there's really any point. Judging by your statement about DMT having the same binding properties as serotonin, your opinion probably comes from ignorance, rather than a careful review of the results available.
 
Originally posted by THE WOOD
honestly i believe that all organisms and their abiotic environment are ment to live in a complete state of symbiotic homeostasis. call me crazy, but i believe plants grow psychoactive agents for us, just as they grow nutrients for us. its a gift. there is no need to question why we are given these gifts when you have experienced them and the wonders they can teach us.

I'm with you on this one.

Recently finished reading Food of the Gods by Terrence McKenna. Some interesting ideas in that book.

=D
 
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