LSD producing HBWR/Morning Glory vine

I've been pondering an interesting theory I've had. If you think about this, it may make some sense. Before I say this, I do not claim to have any significant knowledge in botany or biology, so this may be absolutely incorrect/impossible. So, what if an LSA producing vine rather produced LSD? Maybe one that's significantly genetically different and could be selectively breeded. I'm not quite sure how it produces the LSA, depending on how it's done, it may be possible. Also, that brings me to another question: could an LSA producing vine be changed to produce LSD? It may seem like that of a layman, but if it could be done, think about all of the LSD you could produce.... and how revolutionary that would be.

I may start researching this as a side project. I'll post progress here, if it goes anywhere.. What's your opinion on this?

 

LSD is LSA, with all the crap taken out and tweeked by man/ Albert Hoffmann ..

 

Yeah, good point. If you could someone do that though, "tweak" either a HBWR vine to produce "LSD seeds".... ahh that would be automatic production, no effort afterwards. One can only imagine. :sunny:

 

Really cool theory! Let me preface my response by saying that I don't have much knowledge in botany or chemistry either...

This thread prompted me to do some research and best as I can tell is that it could perhaps be a possibility however it may not be immeadiately ingestible. To form LSD, Diethylamine needs to react with the Carboxylic acid group that is already apart of lysergic acid amide (LSA). Im not sure if this process could be as simple as injecting a HBWR seed or morning glory seed with diethylamine, (I assume it wouldn't be) but regardless diethylamine is a corrosive chemical, so that probably turned me off from attempting it.

Eventually I may look into other lysergamides such as LSB and LSP and see if the same concepts could be applied. For now I'm probably just going to explore LSA a few more times.

 

I bet a little kitchen chemistry might be able to get something useful from LSA producing seeds. Surely not LSD but perhaps a refined LSA byproduct significantly better than raw seeds.

Vinegar, baking soda?
Brew into tea and extract?
Fermenting?

Thoughts?

 

Yeah, good points were made. Thanks for your good input, as always!

Yeah, that certainly can be done with a CWE to get to an isolated version of LSA. I'm speaking of a plant that actually produces LSD, either done intentionally through genetics, or by a natural mutation. If you're interested, look up either "morning glory cwe" or "hbwr cwe", and you'll get many various methods. :2thumbsup:

 

http://www.erowid.org/plants/morning_glory/morning_glory_extraction2.shtml

Never got round to doing this cos I gave the rest of my seeds away, but sounds a lot more efficient and reliable than the cold waters. Still get some nasties with CWEs too, it's not totally isolated.


And uhh, massive amount of man points if you manage to grow an acid plant, if successful.. I'd love some seeds, or a cutting

 

i do a lot of genetics for my job. what you describe would be theoretically possible, but pretty difficult. for a plant geneticist, it might be easier than "just" synthesizing LSD, but for the lay person, it'd probably be every bit as difficult - get working on an organic chemistry degree, or one in genetics.

your project would involve knowing the LSA biosynthetic pathway in exhaustive detail. you'd need to know all the genes for the enzymes that catalyze the reactions to produce LSA.

you'd need to know how those reactions differ from the reactions needed to get LSD instead.

it'd be relatively easy to delete the genes for enzymes you don't want, but introducing new genes, that were engineered to produce certain enzymes...that would be much harder. look up "gene therapy." there are a lot of problems with that technique as far as i know.

it might be do-able in yeast (a common model organism), but for HBWR or MG plants...not many people do experiments with them so good luck finding a protocol to insert a gene in there.


really cool idea though. i've fantasized about creating a yeast strain that could produce LSD, but your idea is probably better since those plants already make LSA..maybe it wouldn't be SO hard...

 

From a genetic standpoint the easiest way to do this would probably be through selective breeding. This, however, would take a lot of time. Because, as was mentioned before me, the LSD is a type of LSA just "purified" in a sense, then the way to achieve a LSD producing plant would be too only breed plants that would produce an LSA that has the greatest quantities of LSD. The problem arises when we try to find out how to know how much LSD is in the plant. If you can solve that, then all you need is time hope this helps

 

^^i'm gonna have to disagree with this.

MG and HBWR seeds have LSA in them. 0% LSD. LSD is not a "type of 'purified' LSA." it's a different chemical.

a targeted approach would be difficult, but it would be my bet over selective breeding. there is no selective pressure for LSA producing seeds to start producing LSD instead. i don't think that you could rely on nature to do the work for you in this case. a natural mutation like that is gonna take way too long.

and the way to find out how much LSD is in a plant is with mass spec.

i'm talking about a theoretical approach where you had resources and maybe it wasn't illegal. hypothetical

 

Hypothetically growing ergot and fiddling with its genetics would be easier because it is a fungus, and more primitive than a flowering plant, and i think there are certain alkaloids besides LSA in it. Might never get it to make diethilemyde but might get it to make something that had more similar effect than LSA. Some theories about ergotism say that a fermenting process occours in grain silos that condenses the psychoactive properties of the ergot fungi colonizing the stored grain. It is only then that the concentration of alkaloids can be ingested in sufficient amount for psychedelic effects. Perhaps a strain of ergot could be selectively bred to not produce the harmful alkaliods which can cause gangrene and death (bad) and encouraged to produce the alkaloids responsible for LSD-esque effects.

 

From my understanding, LSA is lysergic acid amide, a general amide category which includes amide groups such as diethylamide

 

Once you guys figure this out, can we make a maple tree that yields Canadian dollars instead of leaves?

 

What that basically says is that LSA is a category

 

I tend to doubt it is possible given the relatively fragile nature of the molecule as noted in TIKHAL;

"LSD is an unusually fragile molecule and some comments are in order as to its stability and storage. As a salt, in water, cold, and free from air and light exposure, it is stable indefinitely. There are two sensitive aspects of its structure. The position of the carboxamide attachment, the 8-position, is affected by basic, or high pH, conditions. Through a process called epimerization, this position can scramble, producing isolysergic acid diethylamide, or iso-LSD. This product is biologically inactive, and represents a loss of a proportionate amount of active product. A second and separate point of instability is the double bond that lies between this 8-position and the aromatic ring. Water or alcohol can add to this site, especially in the presence of light (sunlight with its ultraviolet energy is notoriously bad) to form a product that has been called lumi-LSD, which is totally inactive in man. Oh yes, and often overlooked, there may be only an infinitesimal amount of chlorine in treated tap water, but then there is only an infinitesimal amount of LSD in a typical LSD solution. And since chlorine will destroy LSD on contact, the dissolving of LSD in tap water is not appropriate."

I am curious if iso-LSD or lumi-LSD are present in plants containing LSA. If so it is possible that the plant does produce LSD at some stage but it quickly degrades due to environmental conditions. On second thought, no because you would still detect some amount of LSD in a sample if it were ever produced by the plant.

Upon further thought the ultraviolet from sunlight would destroy the molecule and the seeds are very basic as well (main reason they taste so bad)and that would destroy the molecule.
So I'm gonna say no, ain't gonna happen.

BUT you can grow psilocybin mushrooms in special substrates and get mushrooms with different chemicals than psilocin and psilocybin;

http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/shulgin/blg/index.html

"However there is a very interesting study that took place in Leipzig about 15 years ago. Jochen Gartz, a mushroom explorer whom I know quite well, has done some fascinating studies with Psilocybe species by raising them on solid media containing strange tryptamines that are alien to the mushroom. Apparently the enzymes that are responsible for the 4-hydroxy group of psilocin are indifferent to what it is they choose to 4-hydroxylate. He has taken things like DPT or DIPT and put them in the growth media and the fruiting bodies that came out contain 4-hydroxy-DPT or 4-hydroxy-DIPT instead of psilocin. In fact, he has a patent on the process. These active compounds are made by the mushroom so they really are natural and yet they never have been observed in nature. I'll give you even odds that if you put spores of a psilocybe species on cow droppings loaded with 5-MeO-DMT you would come out with mushrooms containing 4,5-HO-MeO-DMT. This way you avoid a 10 step synthesis by growing a psychoactive mushroom that contains no illegal drug."

 

i think LSA is the amide. LSD is diethylamide. they are related structures yes, but they are different too. they are part of a family, but i dunno what it's called, don't think it's "LSA" though."

might be more feasible, and i already work with a different fungus.

UV can mutate your DNA too, but it doesn't most of the time because our skin protects it. so that COULD be the case with endogenous LSD in a plant too....maybe!

 

Not really, plants allow light to penetrate the leaves to collect more energy and many plant leaves are opaque.
Our skin produces melanin to specifically absorb the UV light.
We block UV, plants require it. but you know all this.

Now the seeds and internal structures may be safe, but then you do have the whole PH problem.

Now how about growing mushrooms in a substrate rich in LSA?
I wonder what that would yield.

 

i don't think plants require UV light. they absorb visible light at wavelengths other than green (which they reflect). i'm not an expert on plant biology though.

LSD fed to a mushroom would probably do nothing. if mushrooms can 4-hyroxylate different tryptamines, LSD is structurally different enough that i don't think it would work.

 

Yes you could use lsa (ergine) along with a highly complicated chemical process with highly volatile chemicals added to produce the added group producing the semi-synthetic substance lsd (if you don't blow yourself up). Though they are similar in structure, an lsa containing plant will never produce lsd (no matter how engineered). It is only by molecular engineering which would kill a living plant that lsa can be an "ingredient" to making lsd (and it is just a single "ingredient"). It would take an lsa containing plant many generations to produce lsd, while its life-span from that chemical engineering would most definately kill it.

 

LSA, being highly acidic would cause the substrate and any sign of mushrooms die.