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 Jvells
Mmmmm...gyms..
Registered: 11/05/09
Posts: 768
Loc: Massachusetts
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 Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all?
#12903899 - 07/15/10 05:19 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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If possible post your source, thank you.
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EdgeChaos
Still a stranger
Registered: 08/04/06
Posts: 2,060
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 Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: Jvells]
#12903924 - 07/15/10 05:28 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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psilocin/psilocybin is controlling brain of humans. proliferation of the fungal spore is the ultimate understanding.
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 nooneman
Stranger
Registered: 04/24/09
Posts: 2,897
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: Jvells]
#12903968 - 07/15/10 05:40 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Clearly psilocin is causing a lot of people to cultivate psilocin containing mushrooms, maybe that was it's purpose all along?  
Seriously though, I think it's probably to keep insects from eating it. I have no sources, naturally, but I think it's a good guess. I've noticed that ants seem to avoid psilocybin mushrooms, dried ones at least. On the other hand, some people have reported the opposite, that ants have specifically gone after mushrooms.
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Ollie88
Ranger
Registered: 05/27/10
Posts: 71
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: nooneman]
#12904898 - 07/15/10 09:00 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
nooneman said:
Seriously though, I think it's probably to keep insects from eating it. I have no sources, naturally, but I think it's a good guess. I've noticed that ants seem to avoid psilocybin mushrooms, dried ones at least. On the other hand, some people have reported the opposite, that ants have specifically gone after mushrooms.
I have seen bugs eat Pan. cinctulus voraciously. Also ants like to eat azurescens mycelium.
Maybe humanoids put it there so that we could communicate with them.
Maybe it has some unknown function or maybe it is a byproduct of some biological function. Kind of like DMT in animals and plants.
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MonkeyKnifeFight
Stranger
Registered: 06/08/10
Posts: 770
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: Ollie88]
#12904969 - 07/15/10 09:15 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Well natural selection comes to mind. I know I remember reading about some damn old neanderthal or whatever that had a pouch that turned out to have psycadelic mushrooms in it. And this article claims cave art thousands of years ago was inspired by shrooms:
http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/mus01.htm
Not sure if there are other reasons but 10,000 years of humans carrying them around wouldn't hurt their proliferation.
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RogerRabbit
Bans for Pleasure
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Loc: USA Mountain Northwest
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: Jvells]
#12905105 - 07/15/10 09:44 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Psilocybin is there because it is. Why would some fungi taste horrible and others taste wonderful? Why would some, such as the death cap kill anyone who ate it? After all, how could it be for protection if any dumb animal who ate it would die and not be able to tell others to stay away? Remember, these fungi evolved millions of years before humans and possibly animals did.
In short, people can philosophize about why psilocybin is in certain mushrooms, but there's no hard science to support any claims.
RR
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www.mushroomvideos.com
semper in excretia sumus solim profundum variat
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acetylsalicylic
Registered: 05/08/10
Posts: 84
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: RogerRabbit]
#12905859 - 07/16/10 04:23 AM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Just some general info:
Alkaloids present in an organism don't necessarily have a corresponding metabolic function. It has been theorized that some alkaloids are left over intermediaries of metabolic reactions. This info is from a book I read from the 1950's. At that time the definition of an alkaloid was very much up in the air and I think to some extent it still is. (If there is a solid definition I'd love to hear it.)
While there's a pathway that leads to these molecules, the molecules themselves need not be produced for any specific purpose.
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Edited by acetylsalicylic (07/16/10 04:34 AM)
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peddler
SporesGalore
Registered: 06/27/10
Posts: 113
Loc: Southeast US
Last seen: 1 year, 4 months
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: Jvells]
#12910399 - 07/17/10 03:32 AM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Jvells said:
If possible post your source, thank you.
I don't remember ever reading about a biological need of psilocin/psilocybin by the fungus, but from an evolutionary standpoint, it can't have a better mechanism for survival.
How many times have I neglected "regular" plants and mushrooms to the point they eventually died? Unfortunately quite a few.
How many times have I don't the same to "medicinal" mushrooms and plants? All the time... SIKE!
On a serious note, perhaps at some point in the past there was a use for these substances by the fungus that has long since vanished (helping it grow on a particular substrate, a deterrent to a particular pest, etc.), or perhaps it was just a fluke of nature.
Either way, I am glad to have it.
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A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein
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curenado
73rd Man
Registered: 04/01/03
Posts: 2,601
Loc: North Central Arkansas
Last seen: 1 year, 3 months
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: peddler]
#12911040 - 07/17/10 09:39 AM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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I have wondered if it is not simply the by-product or precursor for the multiple antibiotics they produce at different stages to protect themselves - but that is only a speculation, not even worked into a hypothesis.
As to the current science - solid definitions are being made up - They just don't mean anything beyond what it used to and are for socio-industrial purposes (pharmacolization).
There seems to be a new rush to validate hokey theories and convenient philosophers that facilitate control and fascism.
What responcible folk used to keep in theory (like say Freud) is currently being touted for the public as more fact for such purposes.
...or so it seems to me..
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Yours in the Natural State!
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep; but I have patches to keep, and jars to sterilize before I sleep...."
Edited by curenado (07/17/10 02:10 PM)
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fastfred
Old Hand
Registered: 05/17/04
Posts: 6,242
Loc: Dark side of the moon
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: curenado]
#12912154 - 07/17/10 02:35 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
At that time the definition of an alkaloid was very much up in the air and I think to some extent it still is. (If there is a solid definition I'd love to hear it.)
Any compound with a basic nitrogen atom can be properly be called an alkaloid.
-FF
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curenado
73rd Man
Registered: 04/01/03
Posts: 2,601
Loc: North Central Arkansas
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: fastfred]
#12912283 - 07/17/10 03:14 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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OK so big genius, what do you think of the possibility that it is a precursor for the mushroom itself? Can't believe you didn't at least spec on that....I only spec'd it because of the things they do to develop and self protect and it seemed like........remotely possible?
Have you any theories yourself FF? God knows they would be thought out and hard to hack at...
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Yours in the Natural State!
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep; but I have patches to keep, and jars to sterilize before I sleep...."
Edited by curenado (07/17/10 08:10 PM)
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Ollie88
Ranger
Registered: 05/27/10
Posts: 71
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: curenado]
#12914940 - 07/18/10 09:48 AM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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I have read somewhere that psychedelics kill rabbits quite easily. Maybe there was a mushroom eating rabbit, and psilocin evolved as a defence.
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NizzyJones
Fight evil with funk
Registered: 08/22/06
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: Ollie88]
#12915017 - 07/18/10 10:13 AM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Ollie88 said:
I have read somewhere that psychedelics kill rabbits quite easily. Maybe there was a mushroom eating rabbit, and psilocin evolved as a defence.
Edit: Okay, they are unusually sensitive but you're still talking about a rabbit eating something around a quarter pound of mushrooms to get to the inter-venous LD50, not totally sure how that would relate to the oral LD50 but I'd imagine it's lower.
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Wildflower seed on the sand and stone, may the four winds blow you safely home
Edited by NizzyJones (07/18/10 10:24 AM)
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Molester
#ffffff power
Registered: 07/10/10
Posts: 265
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: Ollie88]
#12917126 - 07/18/10 07:32 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Ollie88 said:
I have read somewhere that psychedelics kill rabbits quite easily. Maybe there was a mushroom eating rabbit, and psilocin evolved as a defence.
rofl
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naked_nacromancer
erotic
Registered: 03/16/10
Posts: 68
Loc: 
Last seen: 1 month, 5 days
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: Molester]
#12918601 - 07/19/10 06:57 AM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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in true hullucinations by terrence Mckenna in the chapter "the coming off the strophariad"
The mushroom always returned to the theme that it was wise in the ways of evolution and sympathetic therefore to a symbiotic union with what it referred to as "the human beings." It was eager to share its own sense of the howness of things, a sense that had been developed over millions of years of conscious experience as an intelligent organism radiating through the galaxy. From its point of view, the mushroom is an elder life form, and as such it offers its tempering experience to a vibrant but naive child-race standing for the first time on the brink of flight to the stars. As our imagination has striven outward to attempt to encompass the possibility of the intelligent Other somewhere in the starry galaxy, so has the Other, observing this, revealed itself to be among us, when we are in the psilocybin trance, as an aspect of ourselves. In the phenomenon of Stropharia cubensis, we are confronted with an intelligent and seemingly alien life-form, not as we commonly imagine it, but an intelligent alien life nevertheless. In the often zany way that it does, popular culture has anticipated even this odd turn of events. Invasion of the Mushroom People, a schlocko-socko B science fiction film from those same good folks who brought us Godzilla, contains a final scene in which a team of Japanese explorers are transformed beyond the reach of audience identification into a group of mushrooms singing together in an islanded Asian rain forest.
Only an anachronistic lack of informed self-reflection would lead one to suppose that an intelligent, alien life-form would be even remotely like ourselves. Evolution is an unceasing river of forms and adaptive solutions to special conditions, and culture is even
more so. It is far more likely that an alien intelligence would be barely recognizable to us than that it should overwhelm us with such similarities as humanoid form and an intimate knowledge of our gross industrial capacity. Star-traveling species could be presumed to have a sophisticated knowledge of genetics and DNA function and therefore would not necessarily bear the form that evolution on a native planet had given them. They might well look as they wished to look. The mushroom, with its habit of living off nonliving organic matter and its cobweb-fragile underground network of ephemeral mycelium, seems an organism designed with
Buddhist values of noninterference and low environmental impact in mind.
"I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty times older than your history. Though I have been on earth for ages, I am from the stars. My home is no one planet, for many worlds scattered through the shining disk of the galaxy have conditions which allow my spores an opportunity for life. The mushroom which you see is the part of my body given to sex thrills and sun bathing. My true body is a fine network of fibers growing through the soil. These networks may cover acres and may have far more connections than the number in a human brain. My mycelial network is nearly immortal—only the sudden toxification of a planet or the explosion of its parent star can wipe me out. By means impossible to explain because of certain misconceptions in your model of reality, all my mycelial networks in the galaxy are in hyperlight communication across space and time. The mycelial body is as fragile as a spider's web, but the collective hypermind and memory is a huge historical archive of the career of evolving intelligence on many worlds in our spiral star swarm. Space, you see, is a vast ocean to those hardy life forms that have the ability to reproduce from spores, for spores are covered with the hardest organic substance known. Across the aeons of time and space drift many spore- forming life-forms in suspended animation for millions of years until contact is made with a suitable environment. Few such species are minded, only myself and my recently
evolved near relatives have achieved the hypercommuni-cation mode and memory capacity that makes us leading members in the community of galactic intelligence. How the hypercommunication mode operates is a secret which will not be lightly given to man. But the means should be obvious: It is the occurrence of psilocybin and psilocin in
the biosynthetic pathways of my living body that opens for me and my symbiots the vision screens to many worlds. You as an individual and humanity as a species are on the brink of the formation of a symbiotic relationship with my genetic material that will eventually carry humanity and earth into the galactic mainstream of the higher civilizations.
Since it is not easy for you to recognize other varieties of intelligence around you, your most advanced theories of politics and society have advanced only as far as the notion of collectivism. But beyond the cohesion of the members of a species into a single social organism there lie richer and even more baroque evolutionary possibilities. Symbiosis is one of these. Symbiosis is a relation of mutual dependence and positive benefits for both the species involved. Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of my development. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my memory is the knowledge of hyperlight-drive ships and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns less forsaken and nearer galaxy center. To secure an eternal existence down the long river of cosmic time, I again and again offer this agreement to higher beings and thereby have spread throughout the galaxy over the long millennia. A mycelial network has no organs to move the world, no hands; but higher animals with manipulative abilities can become partners with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith can return both themselves and their humble mushroom teacher to the million worlds all citizens of our star swarm are heir to."
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anonjon
Partially Right
Registered: 11/03/08
Posts: 6,322
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: naked_nacromancer]
#12921343 - 07/19/10 07:55 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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I have a theory about psilocybin.
What if it's no coincidence that PE has distorted physical characteristics and higher than normal psilocybin levels?
Let's say it's true what RR postulates, that psilocybin production ceases as the veil pops and spores drop.
Well, PE are defective and the spores don't drop. They get stuck in the barrel so to speak.
Maybe as a result the psilocybin production doesn't cease. The level increases and the neck of the fruit swells up and starts getting all wrinkly.
What does all this mean? If the correlation is not coincidental, then psilocybin is probably not some random secondary metabolite. It could be regulating growth in some way.
I've been observing these PEU and they are particularly strange. The whole fruit gets darker as they mature and the caps turn dark green. 
Look at the inside, comparison of a younger one to a fully mature one:
 
 
and btw those 2 fruits are from the same multispore substrate. the PEU puts out some fruits that are the "cut" morphology.
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The above post is fictional, hypothetical, or downright nonsensical.
Edited by anonjon (07/19/10 08:00 PM)
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curenado
73rd Man
Registered: 04/01/03
Posts: 2,601
Loc: North Central Arkansas
Last seen: 1 year, 3 months
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: anonjon]
#12921569 - 07/19/10 08:36 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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<<What does all this mean? If the correlation is not coincidental, then psilocybin is probably not some random secondary metabolite. It could be regulating growth in some way.>>
Could be - Now I am really wondering because after it dropped it's spores it would not need to protect the fruit body anymore and I wonder if it (psilocybin) is still in the mycelium and continues to produce to protect the mycelium - if it is protective at all, and not more regulatory as you suggest.
Good observation w/ the PE thing. Never thought of that....
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Yours in the Natural State!
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep; but I have patches to keep, and jars to sterilize before I sleep...."
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PrimalSoup
stronger than dirt
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Loc: PNW 
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: Jvells]
#12922304 - 07/19/10 11:01 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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OK, well I'm like "WTF is this thread all about, now?" Because most mushrooms are not psilocybin and they do quite well. But some mushrooms produce alkaloids that play no obvious role in the life cycle (including the Psilocybes). One could conclude that mushrooms just tend to like producing alkaloids, kind of a crap shoot affair...
This either means nothing (which is quite possible - for instance, why do humans have exactly 4 fingers and one thumb, when the earliest vertebrates had on occasion up to 7 fingers?) or it means the mushrooms found the alkaloids useful in some way that may never become obvious (it's evolution, baby!) or it means they evolved this particular and complicated bio-synthesis route to express over 1% body weight just because in some unpredictable future humans would get off on it...or "insert your favorite crackpot theory here.
I'm going with #2, it's right along the lines of why, for instance, humans have such a complicated red blood cell oxygen binding system - it's just what happened, and we may never know what all the precursor steps were.
I do know that if you ask the mushrooms themselves about this (because I have) that they will spin you the most ridiculous stories about the past and their history. One might consider wielding Ockham's razor in cases like that and winnow some of the chaff off the wheat, that's all I'm saying. 
Peace
-PS
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...................................................The ConstruKction of Light: king crimson
   
Primal's simple tested teks and projects:  Grain Prep Tea Tek Potency Project!
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curenado
73rd Man
Registered: 04/01/03
Posts: 2,601
Loc: North Central Arkansas
Last seen: 1 year, 3 months
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: PrimalSoup]
#12922323 - 07/19/10 11:08 PM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Oh I think it was just fun speculation because that's all we have until something clearer presents, if ever.
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Yours in the Natural State!
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep; but I have patches to keep, and jars to sterilize before I sleep...."
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fastfred
Old Hand
Registered: 05/17/04
Posts: 6,242
Loc: Dark side of the moon
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Re: Why is psilocin/psilocybin in mushrooms, how's does it help the mushrooms life cycle if at all? [Re: curenado]
#12922910 - 07/20/10 04:03 AM (1 year, 10 months ago) |
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Yep, it's pretty much just fun speculation.
My opinion on the matter is that it's definitely not a deterrent. Dung loving fungi WANT to get eaten. That's usually how they end up in a pile of shit! There's also no deterrent value for most things that eat them anyways. If anything it's an attractant.
One thing I was thinking is that perhaps when people or animals are eating them the effects will cause them to wander around for some time rather than trekking straight back to their normal homes. That would help spread spores around to new territory.
Genetically speaking, there are all sorts of reasons organisms produce biologically useless compounds. If they don't lower survival directly, and don't consume undue amounts of energy, there's very little evolutionary pressure to eliminate them from their metabolism. I think it's pretty likely they serve no purpose for the mushroom biochemically.
The 4-hydroxylase that produces psilocin is pretty non-specific. So it could be involved in any number of useful reactions, and simply produces psilocin as a side reaction.
One thing in all of this is clear... The mushrooms current success is due to humans making them the most widely cultivated mushrooms in the world. And we cultivate them specifically because of the active compounds they contain.
So evolutionarily, producing psilocin is the most successful survival strategy ever developed by a mushroom.
-FF
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