On Tuesday, October 16, 2018, 1:08:02 AM PDT, Steven Schear <[email protected]> wrote:
>Jim, >A much better solution to the problem of secure sales of controlled substances >is to eliminate conventional distribution. (I think we may have discussed this >more than two decades ago): use genomics. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05659-z >No reason such yeasts couldn't be informally transferred between people any >different than sourdough starter nor express other psychotropics. Without the >money incentives and common illicit channels it could end the war on illicit >drugs. I just did a Google search for 'recombinant DNA THC' and found: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/09/15/modified-yeast-marijuana/#.W8bZvWhKiM9 "Yeast Can Now Produce THC, Marijuana’s Infamous Compound By Carl Engelking | September 15, 2015 2:15 pm Yeast, the sugar-gobbling microorganism that’s filled our bellies with beer and bread for millennia, has a new, increasingly important, role to play in society: serving as a therapeutic drug factory. In August, scientists announced they had genetically engineered yeast to produce the painkiller hydrocodone, and even before that breakthrough, modified yeast churned out the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. Now, scientists have customized yeast to create THC (the marijuana chemical that produces a “high”) and cannabidiol. Drug Factories Biochemists from the Technical University in Dortmund, Germany, created a genetically-engineered yeast strain to produce very small amounts of THC or cannabidiol. Unlike normal yeast, however, these custom yeast have to be fed cannabigerolic acid, which is a precursor molecule to THC and cannabidiol. Using a molecular precursor as a starting point is a bit like reading a book from the middle chapters to its conclusion. Ideally, the entire process would start with simple sugars — or chapter 1 — rather than precursors to complete the entire chemical pathway that the marijuana plant does naturally. However, scientists believe they’ll get to that point and scale up production for industrial use in the near future, the New York Times reports. The team published its work with the yeast strain that produces THC in the journal Biotechnology Letters. They also created a separate strain that produces cannabidiol, but those data are yet to be published." [end of quote] Jim Bell
