Sponsored by

VGoodiez 420EDC
  • Welcome to VaporAsylum! Please take a moment to read our RULES and introduce yourself here.
  • Need help navigating the forum? Find out how to use our features here.
  • Did you know we have lots of smilies for you to use?

Research Yeast engineered to cheaply produce marijuana cannabinoids

GreenHopper

20 going on 60
yeast-thc-compound-1.jpg


Yeast engineered to cheaply produce marijuana cannabinoids
(www.newatlas.com)

In an exciting new breakthrough from scientists at UC Berkeley, common brewer's yeast has been engineered to produce several major cannabinoids found in marijuana. This innovation promises faster, cheaper and easier production of these compounds for use in research and medical treatments.


Yeast is a pretty amazing microorganism. One species in particular, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has played a fundamental role in human life for thousands of years. From leavening bread to producing our alcohol, S. cerevisiae is a pretty helpful little microbe. Over the last few decades, the advent of genetic engineering has allowed scientists to turn yeast into tiny chemical biofactories to help mass produce a variety of compounds humans need, from insulin to growth hormones.

As scientists learn more and more about the medical properties of certain cannabinoid compounds found in marijuana, there is a growing need to find ways to better manufacture those compounds. Marijuana is not necessarily a difficult plant to grow, however it is energy intensive and its valuable cannabinoids naturally occur in such tiny quantities that mass production is a challenge. Purity of extraction is another issue for scientists, especially when trying to develop medical treatments such as CBD for epilepsy.

Yeast traditionally turns sugar into ethanol but the microorganism can be genetically altered to produce different enzymes that result in different chemical byproducts. The new research demonstrated how, through the addition of over a dozen different genes, the yeast could be engineered to a produce variety of cannabinoids including cannabigerolic acid, tetrahydrocannabinolic acid, and cannabidiolic acid. These compounds, with the addition of heat, easily become the more commonly known cannabinoids CBG, THC, and CBD.



"For the consumer, the benefits are high-quality, low-cost CBD and THC: you get exactly what you want from yeast," explains Jay Keasling, one of the scientists working on the project. "It is a safer, more environmentally friendly way to produce cannabinoids."

Alongside the manufacturing benefits, the new method may allow scientists better opportunities to research some of the rarer and more novel cannabinoids that are nearly impossible to extract from the plant. There are over 100 different, novel chemicals in marijuana plants so this new method paves the way for production in large quantities of pure cannabinoids with an ease and volume that scientists have never experienced.

"The economics look really good," says Keasling. "The cost is competitive or better than that for the plant-derived cannabinoids. And manufacturers don't have to worry about contamination – for example, THC in CBD – that would make you high."

The new research was published in the journal Nature.

Source: UC Berkeley



 
Yeah I saw this, and my thoughts were what about all the other chemicals that make cannabis special? CBG, terpenes, delta 8 THC, etc

I was thinking along similar lines. Maybe they could produce something along the lines of distillate. I doubt this is intended to replace growing plants but might be an easier way of producing a distillate type product.

Didn't this same story come out a year or two ago on April 1? April 1, as in april fools day. Or was that broccoli or something?

Definitely not the first time I've read about engineering yeast to produce certain substances. I don't think it's fake news, sounds like a company would make a lot of money if they could figure out how to get yeast to produce the base canabinoids needed for a distillate type product. They could essentially replace the growing and fractional distillation processess, I can see why there is interest in the research.
 
You guys don't remember that scene from 2015 season of Mr Robot?
Sorry for the quality i found only that channel on youtube that put it online.

Great writers, and that fits perfectly with Romero's character.
 
I don't think it's fake news

The post links to the Nature article, so probably not fake.

To accomplish this, we engineered the native mevalonate pathway to provide a high flux of geranyl pyrophosphate and introduced a heterologous, multi-organism-derived hexanoyl-CoA biosynthetic pathway. We also introduced the Cannabis genes that encode the enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of olivetolic acid, as well as the gene for a previously undiscovered enzyme with geranylpyrophosphate:olivetolate geranyltransferase activity and the genes for corresponding cannabinoid synthases. Furthermore, we established a biosynthetic approach that harnessed the promiscuity of several pathway genes to produce cannabinoid analogues. Feeding different fatty acids to our engineered strains yielded cannabinoid analogues with modifications in the part of the molecule that is known to alter receptor binding affinity and potency. We also demonstrated that our biological system could be complemented by simple synthetic chemistry to further expand the accessible chemical space.

Easy-peasey.
 
When is a plant not a plant?
I'm not holding my breath for this one.
I'm going to inhale
One, two, three
Look at me !
I'm vaping like it's Old Skool
Just like nature intended.
:weed: :peace: :weed:
I can't afford to be anything but a hippie
 

Sponsored by

VGoodiez 420EDC
Back
Top