Finally, researchers are again exploring the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics to treat the likes of depression, addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. To provide pharmaceutical-quality compounds for clinical trials, scientists are developing new ways to produce the psychedelics. Chemical engineers at Miami University in Ohio have now genetically engineered E. coli to crank put psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms. From Scientific American:
The modified microbes generated up to 1.16 grams of psilocybin per liter of culture medium—the highest yield to date from any engineered organism and a 10-fold increase over the next best attempt. Scaled up, the new method could produce psilocybin for potential therapeutic use.
“The number-one advantage is it’s simply cheaper” than—or at least cost-competitive with—other methods, says lead study author Alexandra Adams, an undergraduate student in chemical engineering at Miami University in Ohio…
Adams and her colleagues engineered E. coli that incorporated three genes from the Psilocybe cubensis mushroom, enabling the bacteria to synthesize psilocybin from the cheap and easily obtainable precursor molecule 4-hydroxyindole, and then they optimized the process to produce the drug on a larger scale.
One fantastic and wonderful origin theory of Santa Claus involves psychedelic mushrooms and shamanic rituals of the indigenous Sámi people who live in northern Finland. Paul Devereux wrote about this incredible hidden history in his fascinating 2008 book The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia. Then, Brooklyn filmmaker Matthew Salton blew mainstream minds with this […]
READ THE REST
Details are the bane of any manager. It’s tough to innovate when you’ve got invoices to approve, gripes to address and countless fires to put out on any number of projects. Here is where technology can actually help you, because businesses run better when they integrate all their procedures, inflow and outflow under one system. […]
READ THE REST
You may have heard of air fryers, but they’re a lot more versatile than the name implies. Healthier (and quicker!) french fries are just the tip of the iceberg with these innovative cookers, and here are six of our favorites. As if they needed any additional highlighting, you can save an extra 20% off the […]
READ THE REST
So you’ve beefed up your media arsenal with mega-screen HDTVs, top-of-the-line laptops and gaming consoles galore. That’s great, but don’t forget that you need some internet infrastructure to keep it all humming. If a better router is what you need, you could do a lot worse than this NetGear Nighthawk AC1900 – especially a model […]
READ THE REST