Author Topic: Not insects! Trees!  (Read 15227 times)

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user1634

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Not insects! Trees!
« on: July 12, 2000, 03:00:00 AM »
All this talk of insects, but what about plants instead!?  If we can make rice that produces vitamin A, why not make a sassafras tree that produces MDMA!  I'll eat bark over aphid shit any day!

No seriously, they made rice that converts a carotene to vitamin A by inserting DNA for the correct enzymes into rice seeds.  Why not let genetically modify the sassafras tree to convert safrole to mdma?
(I suggest using rice instead of the sassafras tree, but I don't know that rice has a safrole-like precursor)
I'm not saying this is easy, or even possible.  But worth a novel thought or two....
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Rhodium

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #1 on: July 12, 2000, 01:10:00 PM »
Rabbit liver already has a transaminase enzyme that will aminate allylbenzenes in the 2-position. This will produce MDA.

Then you just use a SAMe and a methylation enzyme... This is not that far-fetched, it will be in use in a decade or two.

http://rhodium.lycaeum.org


godshrink

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #2 on: July 12, 2000, 04:18:00 PM »
good thinking. Reason i brought up insects is simple. Number of species outnumbers everything else!
In fact, the number of beetle species alone outnumbers everything else. So its a vast area of possible new chemicals. Second reason is that they are small, and often easy to manipulate...meaning that they might well serve the clandestine chemists of the future. Genetic engineering is likelier to serve big industry
And indeed, perhaps the sassafras tree can be changed...but would it be easy to hide them in your yard?
I thought it would be easier (though still somewhat far-fetched and futuristic) to raise the bug that eats the sassy root that changes it to what we like. I see now that mentioning consuming insect waste product is a bit touchy for the average hivester. I like Mr. Smith's direction alot on this, but i still wonder if govt. controls will be easier when it comes down to genetic engineering. As some famous entymologist once said
"God has an inordinate fondness for beetles" There is so much to learn.
by the way, user 1634, I'm sure that you have already eaten aphid shit and found it to be quite delicious and nutritious, whereas you would find sassy rootbark to be indigestible and toxic. All of us have been eating insects all along. We just haven't noticed. Though truly, i wasn't thinking about consuming them directly. I was assuming some extraction and refinement. Even a pill at the end if you like. Definitely no eyeballs.

Unobtainium

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #3 on: July 12, 2000, 04:33:00 PM »
On a thread about ephedra extraction a while back, worlock went off on a tangent and said he found a mold on the plant that appeared to be meth. He wasn't sure if it was naturally occurring or if the ephedra was contaminated in his lab. But if a plant naturally contains ephedrine, it's not too much of a stretch to believe that it could also be naturally reduced in or on the same plant.


godshrink

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #4 on: July 12, 2000, 05:07:00 PM »
Consider the ergot fungus on rye! Its not so much that the initial plant has to have goodies we want.
People don't use rye for precursors. (oops. Unless Rye whiskey counts) Life forms in general are processing plants, turning compounds into other compounds thru little chem labs inside them. We know virtually nothing about this. But from what is slowly coming out, it won't be long. Think Different(ly)?
btw, Rhodium...Ethics wize, do we want to toss some catepillars into a blender, or do we want to disect rabbits to get high?

godshrink

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #5 on: July 12, 2000, 10:58:00 PM »
hopefully, this is the last i have to say on the subject, and i will be relieved.
I was kinda hoping for a resident entymologist to exist in the hive, that could be introduced to the genetic engineers. Me thinks we all benefit by hybridizations of science.
Many of the drugs we want are toxic alkaloids produced by plants to protect themselves from insects.
The plant is trying to make itself inedible with the foxy compounds like morphine and ephidrine, and saffrrole and whatever yo like. THC. Well, over time, there's always some bugs that develop a strategy for dealing with these nasty alkaloids like cocaine, and figure out how to eat that plant anyway. These are the bugs i would study if i wasn't employed full time as a janitor at walmart. Study the ones that have managed to live off plants that have high concentrations of interesting alkaloids.
Bugs that can handle Jimson Weed, for instance, or poppies, or pot, or ma huang, or co-ca,
or morning glories, or ayhuasca, or peyote, etc., good starting place.These bugs are side-stepping the toxins and eliminating them some how, or they are reducing them with their digestive acid/base
manipulatons. Lotta bugs got toxic arms. Weapons. Strong acids, pheremones, esters, hell...they got bio-luminesence.
Here's a kicker: Some insects are drug addicts! Certain species of ants seek out and allow a certain beetle into the ant colony. The beeetle eats ant larvae! Why do the ants put up with it? Because ants lick a certain drug from glands on the beetle. The ants can survive without the drug. But they like it enough to offer up some babies for it. This ain't bull. The world is strange.

My crazy hunch is that bug drugs exist. I even suspect that the long sought after and debated SOMA
is a hybrid phenomenae. Some bug used to work some plant in those days, and it would cause that plant to exude a counter chemical, or perhaps some puss from the affection.  Gross?

I wonder. Maybe there's a type of Bee that licks the anus of aphids that are parasiticly sucking the juice out of ma huang plants. Maybe that bee returns at the end of its busy day and up-chucks its effort onto the ever -growing, collective crystal of pure meth.
Are you speed freaks gonna tell me you wouldn't do this meth because filthy insects had done the slave labor for you?         Really.


user1634

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #6 on: July 13, 2000, 12:43:00 AM »
Rhodium:
>Rabbit liver already has a transaminase enzyme that will aminate
>allylbenzenes in the 2-position.This will produce MDA.
Can you tell me where you read this so I can go edumacate myself?
Inject this transamines into a sassy tree, and you could extract MDA (if possible) instead of safrole.
(also assuming sassy tree has this allylbenzene you mentioned)

>Then you just use a SAMe and a methylation enzyme...
SAMe  = s-adenosylmethionine?  How does this fit in the picture?

Godshrink:
Yes, genetically engineered sassy bark would not be on my menu!    As for "Would you be able to hide it in the back yard?"  No.  But why not hide it out in the open.  Why not plant it at the nearest state/national park? 

I can see it now... a new category on jeopardy tomorrow.
I'll take aphid-anus licking collective bee vommit for 1000$.
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The opinions of of user1634 are not necessarily those of his editors, keyboard, mouse or monitor.



zephler

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #7 on: July 13, 2000, 01:05:00 AM »
Well they are good thoughts for legal applications, but do you really think any institution that has multi-million dollar resources will genetically engineer bugs or plants to produce illegal drugs, I mean really man....


godshrink

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #8 on: July 13, 2000, 05:19:00 AM »
no, i don't...but i suspect that human beings will continue to explore their world, and passing on information.
How else did our primitive ancestors discover so many of the compounds we have come to know and love? I'm suggesting that that search ain't over yet. And it needn't be a total crap shoot, either. To some extent, we know what to look for.


Mr_Smith

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #9 on: July 13, 2000, 11:17:00 AM »
In one of Shulgin's early papers, he reports that compounds like MDA and TMA accumulate in rat livers after the rats are given alkylbenzines.

Millions of dollars are not really required to carry out this kind of biological research, only space, sterile technique, and careful observation.  For example, one can envision a rather simple experiment where everyday yeast is cultured in 100 or more little vessels on a medium containing a very dilute solution of sassafras root bark extract.  The saffrole, in addition to being toxic to the yeast, is also conveniently mutinagenic. Over a period of time, the concentration fo extract in the yeast cultures would be increased, to the point where 99% of the cultures die.  The surviving culture(s) are likely to consist of yeasts descended from one that could survive the higher concentration of safrole, quite probably because the yeast has enzymes capable of rendering the compound less toxic, by amination perhaps. After a hundred or so new cultures are established, using the surviving strain of yeast, the process can be repeated, until the yeast is resistant enough to survive in a safrole emulsion or something of that nature. Required would be a sensitive test for the presence of MDA, MDMA or whatnot in the culture media, to ensure that the hardy yeast was, in fact aminating the safrole, and not otherwise degrading it.


godshrink

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #10 on: July 13, 2000, 02:54:00 PM »
Mr Smith, you the man! I'm more fumbling in the dark. However, still suspect that the desired chemicals already exist without the manipulations; without the high science...but it would take some pretty high science to find them...and afterword, could be obtained by plain weirdos. Its a little hard for me to belive that engineers with the abilities you describe would be involved in such clandestine activities. But i hope so.


Shambhala

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #11 on: July 13, 2000, 05:41:00 PM »
Some where around the old board(or here) there is a thread about a Safrole tree.  Or mabey that was a dream a just had?  HTML/ xxxxxx.html? Anyone?


Lem

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #12 on: July 14, 2000, 12:30:00 AM »
perhaps someone could engineer some kind of transamine containing sassafras blight! ;-)

Only fools rush in where hard-headed psychonauts fear to tread.

MrGreen

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #13 on: July 16, 2000, 04:20:00 AM »
Mr_Smith
Just one word... yeehaw.  Cool idea.
How 'bout this for a modification to your experiment.  Rather than testing the surviving yeast for transaminase activity, why not just stick the transamine enzyme in the yeast to begin with?  Don't they inject yeast with dna all the time in biotech companies? 
(this way you don't have to figure out which yeasts/yeasti/yeasteses are just immune to safrole somehow)
Can you buy transamine enzyme from chem suppliers?  (i know i know, look it up myself.)


StuckMojo

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #14 on: July 16, 2000, 09:03:00 AM »
What a bad ass idea!!!!.....I cant wait till i start getting a strain of tomato that produces THC.  I guess i will just have to replace half of the C02 that the plant is breathing off of with pot smoke and watch the puppy suck it up.  Or i guess that would just make a cannibis dependant sub-species....*sigh*    Anyway to cross breed other plants with cannibis or psilocybin??  I would just love some nice pychoactive sun-flower seeds....the posibilities are endless!!!


godshrink

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #15 on: July 16, 2000, 03:09:00 PM »
Funny how a thread trying to be about trees has come around to yeasts. Its a good sign, to  me.Large think goes small. I just hope fungi doesn't get slighted in the rush. Seriously, ya'll on to something.
Go, cats, go!


MrGreen

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #16 on: July 17, 2000, 05:43:00 PM »
Well, after surfing the web for a good long while, I've found a ton of info on dopamine biosynthesis.
Check the big pic' out at

http://stevens.scripps.edu/hydroxylase.html


If rice/tomatoes/sassy trees/yeast contained some of these enzymes, plus something to add a CH3 group etc, you have a biosynthesis.

Am I talking to myself out here?  Are there any bees with more biology than I that could fill in my gaps in my know-how?



godshrink

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #17 on: July 17, 2000, 09:00:00 PM »
Mr. Green! Good site. May you bio-synthesize with many, or at least engage dialog. Haven't been here long (too long)  not many biologists at a chem site. Mr Smith knows things? Synthesizing understanding from many fields of study would bee hot. Chemist, brain guys, cellular physiologists, botanists and ethno-botan






ists-pharmacologists. Maybe throw in a few shamans...stir that soup, and we'd get a buzz. Good luck


john_galt

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #18 on: July 17, 2000, 09:52:00 PM »
You buzzed:
____________________________________________________________
Rabbit liver already has a transaminase enzyme that will aminate allylbenzenes in the 2-position. This will produce MDA.
____________________________________________________________
Why are we not making MDA in this way? I am sure you can buy the enzyme from a biochem supplier. It is expensive, I'm sure, but enzymes are extremely efficient little bees, and can make many times their weight in honey.
Better idea. My roomy (from Germany) is a biochem dude, works in a genetics lab.
Step 1.
get some undifferentiated sassafras tree cells and grow in a culture.
Step 2.
Order the gene for the enzyme from a biochem company. Yes, you can do this.
Step 3. This one is hard, you have to get the DNA for the enzyme into the nucleus of the cell. Pay a biochem company to do it for you.
Step 4.
Using your designer sassy cell, and the correct hormones (Carolina Biological, anyone :)) grow that cell into a seedling in an agar growth medium(aerated at formation), transfer to a more common medium, and propagate(seeds are best bet, as cuttings from sassy don't root very well). Now, spread your seeds far and wide. And I do mean far and wide. Plant morphology should not change very well, and after beeing in the ecosystem for a few decades, it will be impossible to eradicate this botanical bee from the face of the earth :)

All in great fun :)
"I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will not live for the sake of any other man, nor ask any other man to live for mine"
-John Galt


john_galt

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Re: Not insects! Trees!
« Reply #19 on: July 17, 2000, 10:06:00 PM »
You buzzed:
Anyway to cross breed other plants with cannibis or psilocybin??
Plants have successfully been combined, like the potato and tomato, and the science is actually quite sophisticated, to the point of emphasizing one of the species' morphology over the other. As for combining a fungus and a plant? Isn't there a song by Duran Duran called "Cannabis and Mushroom DNA Just Don't Mix?"
"Congress shall make no law restricting the freedom of trade, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor shall any property be taken for public use whatsoever."
-John Galt