News release

From: AAAS

Five natural psychedelics biosynthesized in one plant

Researchers have reconstructed the full biosynthetic pathways of five tryptamine psychedelics—normally harvested from a variety of medicinal plants, mushrooms and the Sonoran Desert toad—in one plant system. This accomplishment could pave the way for developing a quality pipeline for these products in the quantities essential for further study and clinical applications, according to Paula Berman and colleagues. Tryptamine psychedelics such as psilocybin have shown promising therapeutic potential for conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. Harvesting them from natural sources raises ecological and ethical concerns, along with scaling challenges, and synthetic versions of the psychedelics require intensive processing and can lead to unwanted byproducts. Berman et al. analyzed the N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) biosynthetic pathways in psilocin and psilocybin found in mushrooms, DMT (the psychoactive component of ayahuasca) in plants, and bufotenin and 5-methoxy-DMT secreted by the Sonoran Desert toad. The researchers then overexpressed the most active genes from each pathway in a tobacco plant (a common model for plant research) to create a platform that produced all five psychedelics. Berman et al. also engineered halogenated analogs of these molecules, which do not naturally occur in plants but may have therapeutic potential.