E.coli is engineered to produce the chemical that makes magic mushrooms ‘trippy’

E.coli could be manipulated to produce a substance found in magic mushrooms that wards off depression, research suggests.

A team from Miami University genetically engineered the bacteria to churn out the psychoactive chemical psilocybin.

Best known for triggering ‘trippy’ hallucinations, it is increasingly being tested as a treatment for psychiatric disorders, like addiction, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

If ever approved for these conditions, scientists will want to produce psilocybin without harvesting copious amounts of mushrooms, the team said.

After producing an E.coli strain that contains psilocybin, the scientists managed to increase its production by 500 times over 18 months.

They claim this demonstrates the ‘feasibility’ of manufacturing the chemical ‘economically from a biological source’. 

E.coli could be manipulated to produce psilocybin, the psychoactive substance in magic mushrooms. This is increasingly being shown to effectively treat depression (stock)

More than 180 mushrooms species around the world produce psilocybin, Drug Science reported. 

The chemical can enhance the senses, cause users to imagine floating objects and create moments of ‘personal reflection’, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. 

Psilocybin is listed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act in the US, making it illegal to cultivate or possess. They are a Class A drug in the UK.

Before 1970, psilocybin was used to treat resistant depression, anxiety and addiction in the UK.

It was around this time the UK ‘caught up with the US-led “war on drugs”‘, according to King’s College London. 

CAN MAGIC MUSHROOMS TREAT DEPRESSION?

Psilocybin is one of several psychedelic drugs that have recently reemerged from the shadows with promises to treat mental illnesses and addictions.

Portrayals in stone carvings and rock paintings that predate recorded history suggest people discovered the hallucinogenic powers of ‘magic’ mushrooms as early as 9000 BC. 

The fungi were once the centre piece of religious ceremonies.

In 1959 a chemist at the pharmaceutical company Albert Hofmann identified and separated out the psychoactive compound in mushrooms, known as psilocybin.

Between 1961 and 1965, Sandoz sold the compound as a psychotherapeutic medicine called Indocybin. 

It was quickly discontinued when it was widely misused to ‘trip’ or hallucinate.

Psilocybin has since been tightly regulated in the US where it is treated as equally illicit to heroin.

Fresh, but not dried, magic mushrooms were legal in the UK until the Drugs Act 2005 made them Class A.

But as depression continues to surge, scientists are looking for inventive options to treat the disorder.

Psilocybin is a similar shape to the ‘feel good’ neurotransmitter serotonin and binds to some of the same receptors in the brain. 

It appears in brain scans to treat depression by making the amygdala more responsive to emotions.

And patients are better able to process these feelings and feel relief from their symptoms weeks later. 

Other research suggests the drug ‘resets’ neural circuits that create negative feedback loops in patients’ brains. 

Doctors in both the UK and US were then unable to prescribe the chemical outside of authorised research.

Funding for psilocybin studies dried up, causing research to come to a ‘stand still’.

Thirty years later, interest started to pick up again, leading to a slow resurgence of clinical trials.

A study by the UK think-tank Beckley Foundation gave two doses of psilocybin to patients who had battled depression for 18 years and failed to find relief with at least two treatments.

The patients experienced a reduction in symptoms after just one week, which continued six months later. 

With a pressing need to produce large amounts of psilocybin, the Miami scientists warn harvesting magic mushrooms would require ‘extensive real estate and time’. 

Synthetic chemical production is in place but very expensive, they add. 

The team therefore genetically engineered the metabolism of E.coli so its cells produce the chemical. 

This approach is not new, with drugs, like insulin for diabetes, already being produced in genetically-engineered bacteria, Live Science reported. 

The E.coli strain the Miami team used is safe for laboratory purposes, they wrote in the journal Metabolic Engineering.

‘We are taking the DNA from the mushroom that encodes its ability to make this product and putting it in E.coli,’ lead author Dr Andrew Jones said.

‘It’s similar to the way you make beer, through a fermentation process. 

‘We are effectively taking the technology that allows for scale and speed of production and applying it to our psilocybin-producing E. coli.’

After developing multiple strains of ‘psilocybin E.coli’, the bacterium was tested to find its optimal environmental condition.

The most efficient strain, called pPsilo16, was then harvested in large batches.

‘What’s exciting is the speed at which we were able to achieve our high production,’ Dr Jones said.

‘Over the course of this study we improved production from only a few milligrams per litre (0.2 gallons) to over a gram (0.03 oz) per litre, a 500-fold increase.’ 

The scientists claim this is the most psilocybin that has ever been produced from an organism engineered to express ‘magic mushroom DNA’.   

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