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Euhelopus
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Registered: 12/10/23
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Magic mushroom chemical may be a hallucinogenic insect repellent 1
#28577836 - 12/10/23 08:51 PM (1 month, 17 days ago) |
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https://www.newscientist.com/article/2144832-magic-mushroom-chemical-may-be-a-hallucinogenic-insect-repellent/
Magic mushroom chemical may be a hallucinogenic insect repellent
The hallucinogenic effects of magic mushrooms are well documented. But nobody knows what psilocybin, the chemical responsible, does for the mushrooms themselves.
Now, one of the first genomic analyses of hallucinogenic fungi has deciphered psilocybin production, and even suggested a function for it. By messing with insect neurochemistry, psilocybin may act as a psychedelic repellent.
A team of researchers led by Jason Slot at Ohio State University compared the genomes of three hallucinogenic fungi with three non-hallucinogenic relatives. By doing so, they identified the cluster of genes responsible for making psilocybin (bioRxiv, doi.org/cbx2).
Scientists have feted the healing powers of psychedelic drugs many times, but can they ever deliver on the hype?
The gene cluster is found in several distantly related groups, suggesting that the fungi swapped genes in a process called horizontal gene transfer. This is uncommon in mushrooms: it is the first time genes for a compound that is not necessary for the fungi’s survival – called a secondary metabolite – have been found moving between mushroom lineages.
Since these genes have survived in multiple species, Slot thinks psilocybin must be useful to the fungi. “Strong selection could be the reason this gene cluster was able to overcome the barriers to horizontal gene transfer,” he says.
Hallucinogenic mushrooms often inhabit areas rich in fungi-eating insects, so Slot suggests psilocybin might protect the fungi, or repel insects from a shared food source, by somehow influencing their behaviour.
The specific purpose of many secondary metabolites is unknown, says Peter Spiteller at the University of Bremen, Germany. But that’s not to say they don’t have a use. “Secondary metabolites are not just produced for fun,” he says.
However, while psilocybin has been shown to affect the brains of mammals including mice, there is little evidence that it affects insects or other invertebrates – barring a famous 1962 study showing that it changes the way spiders build webs.
That said, other fungi use similar substances to influence insects, “for example the zombie ant fungus,” says Slot. And insects have nervous system receptors similar to those affected by the psilocybin successor molecule psilocin in humans.
In a second study, a group led by Dirk Hoffmeister at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany was able to go one step further. After obtaining a legal permit, they have developed a way to make psilocybin using enzymes (Angewandte Chemie, doi.org/gbp6hh).
This has never been done before and could set the stage for commercial production. In recent years there has been a revival of interest in psilocybin’s potential as a therapeutic drug, an area of research that had stalled due to tough 1970s drug laws
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nooneman


Registered: 04/24/09
Posts: 14,555
Loc: Utah
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Re: Magic mushroom chemical may be a hallucinogenic insect repellent [Re: Euhelopus]
#28577842 - 12/10/23 08:56 PM (1 month, 17 days ago) |
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An alternative theory is that it causes animals to eat it and spread its spores. We have no evidence for any conclusions though.
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Euhelopus
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Registered: 12/10/23
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Re: Magic mushroom chemical may be a hallucinogenic insect repellent [Re: nooneman]
#28577865 - 12/10/23 09:22 PM (1 month, 17 days ago) |
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https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/magic-mushroom-drug-evolved-to-mess-with-insect-brains/
Magic Mushroom Drug Evolved to Mess with Insect Brains
There’s something odd about the many species of magic mushrooms: they’re not related to each other.
Normally, you’d expect such a complex and powerful chemical as psilocybin – the magical ingredient -- to be produced by a closely related group of organisms whose common ancestor discovered it once.
But not in this case. Scores of mushroom species – one lichenized -- from five different distantly-related families make it. A team of American scientists wondered about that, and had a hunch about why it might be.
They tested their hunch by, for the first time, identifying the psilocybin-producing genes (there turned out to be five) and comparing the versions found in the various magic mushrooms. And sure enough: the genes shared the same origin. The psilocybin gene cluster had somehow found its way into distantly related species in a process called horizontal gene transfer, in which unrelated organisms steal genes from one another.
Although mushroom-making fungi, considered sophisticated and complex for the fungal world -- have only rarely been caught donating or stealing genes, the fact that they have made an exception for these genes implies psilocybin is a seriously hot item.
But why? A better question might be what, exactly, does a coffee bush get out of making caffeine, or a coca plant out of making cocaine? Why do magic mushrooms bother to be magic? They aren’t getting magical trips out of the deal.
The surprising reality is that the majority of naturally-produced recreational drugs – caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, morphine, and psilocybin evolved to be, if not quite insecticides, then scramblers of insect brains. The fact that our brains are enjoyably scrambled by them too is sheer coincidence, but also speaks to the uncomfortable truth that your brain is not so different from a cockroach’s as you might like to think. (Of course, you’re also not so different from a plant either)
In humans, psilocybin is converted to psilocin on ingestion, which activates one of the same receptors as feel-good neurotransmitter serotonin and produces the wild effects for which the drug is known. Serotonin, incidentally, is the same molecule on which antidepressant serotonin-reuptake inhibitors like Prozac act. However, serotonin is not the private preserve of humans. All animals with left-right symmetry – including insects -- produce serotonin, as well as some plants and fungi.
A plant has an obvious motive for stockpiling a chemical arsenal: prevent itself from becoming a salad bar. But what about mushrooms? The majority of psilocybin-producing mushrooms are either wood or dung decayers. In those environments, they are not only being eaten by insects, but also competing with them for food. Termites are major fungal competitors inside decaying logs, but a variety of other wood- and dung-eating insects fight with fungi for food.
Psilocybin may help tilt the playing field in the fungus’s favor by causing insects to, I don’t know, maybe blank on what they went in that log for again? Another serotonin receptor antagonist called 5HT-2A causes Drosophila fruit flies to somehow neglect to eat that fruit they’re sitting on.
At least one of the chemicals that makes mushrooms poisonous – muscarine – is often made in the same mushrooms that make psilocybin in the genus Inocybe, which suggests It has a similar purpose. Muscarine is a mimic of the neurotransmitting brain chemical acetylcholine, which helps translate electrical impulses into muscle action, among other roles. Although no one knows its exact effects on insects (if any), when consumed by humans in mushroom form, it causes PSL syndrome: perspiration, salivation, and lachrymation. The most famous acetylcholine mimic, however, is nicotine.
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Land Trout
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Registered: 01/08/18
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Re: Magic mushroom chemical may be a hallucinogenic insect repellent [Re: nooneman]
#28577871 - 12/10/23 09:36 PM (1 month, 16 days ago) |
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I know gnats, beetles, slugs, mites, earth worms, and springtails eat the hell out of my woodlovers when conditions are right for the bugs. If the temps are in the 60s and the fungi are fruiting gnats will be swarming them but not the Psathyrella or tubaria nearby. From my observations I could never come to the conclusion that these compounds had any effect on discouraging little critters like those, but I know Jason’s had a very different objective to study them through. There have been studies where they’ve tracked slugs that have eaten mushrooms and that the fungi survive and have been spread by them, I think the study also found something about the slugs gut encouraging spore germination, but I may have made that part up.
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