Maybe there are places where you can get enzymes that you could add to your cakes (after they've been sterilized..duh!) that would speed up the mushroom's metabolism.

It's been my experience that additives don't really do jack.

If you search the patents you will find a couple of commercial mushroom supplements that contain hydrolysed or denaturated protien.

My thinking is dung loving fungus might benefit from the addition of hydrolysed protein that contains a significant quantity of indolic compounds, not necessarily tryptophan but a decomposition product there of.

The idea of hydrolysing powdered egg whites in the apporpraite amount of caustic then using it as a nitrogen supplement doesn't seem any more far fetched than 'shit tea'. It's just a bit more standardized and methodical.

I guess the bottom line is everyone talks about tryptophan and tryptamine supplementation, yet it appears skatole and indole are the two main main indolic constitutes of manure. I'm just trying to apply some logic in the imitation of nature.

Sometimes to most obvious things are simply overlooked if you don't believ me try this on someone:

Take a penny, a nickel & a quarter and lay them out an a table in front of your friend.

Now say to your friend:
"BOBBY'S MOM HAD THREE KIDS...
SHE NAMED ONE PENNY (point to the penny)
SHE NAMED THE SECOND ONE NICK (point the the nickel)
WHAT DID SHE NAME THE THIRD ONE?"

The answer is so simple there's no trick but your friend won't have a clue.

"BOBBY'S MOM HAD THREE KIDS"

It's really quite amazing how easily we can get confused.

[This message has been edited by woodsman420 (edited May 12, 2000).]

quote:

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Originally posted by woodsman420:
I imagine skatole has a distiguishable odor, I don't know what quantity you need before it actually makes a stench. It's not so much that I'm leaning toward pure skatole, but a nitrogen supplement that contains it.

If you search the patents you will find a couple of commercial mushroom supplements that contain hydrolysed or denaturated protien.

My thinking is dung loving fungus might benefit from the addition of hydrolysed protein that contains a significant quantity of indolic compounds, not necessarily tryptophan but a decomposition product there of.

The idea of hydrolysing powdered egg whites in the apporpraite amount of caustic then using it as a nitrogen supplement doesn't seem any more far fetched than 'shit tea'. It's just a bit more standardized and methodical.

I guess the bottom line is everyone talks about tryptophan and tryptamine supplementation, yet it appears skatole and indole are the two main main indolic constitutes of manure. I'm just trying to apply some logic in the imitation of nature.

Sometimes the most obvious things are simply overlooked if you don't believe me try this on someone:

Take a penny, a nickel & a quarter and lay them out an a table in front of your friend.

Now say to your friend:
"BOBBY'S MOM HAD THREE KIDS...
SHE NAMED ONE PENNY (point to the penny)
SHE NAMED THE SECOND ONE NICK (point the the nickel)
WHAT DID SHE NAME THE THIRD ONE?"

The answer is so simple there's no trick but your friend won't have a clue.

"BOBBY'S MOM HAD THREE KIDS"

It's really quite amazing how easily we can get confused.

[This message has been edited by woodsman420 (edited May 12, 2000).]

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I also haven't been able to find any definitive study that thoroughly explains the chemical interaction of psilicin on the human brain (I know how X works, and other shit, but not good ol' 4-HO-DMT).

I doubt anyone will respond to this...

I don't understand why so many people think tryptophan is consumed and metabolised by mushrooms?!?!

I can understand how endogenous tryptophan becomes psilo but that doesn't mean a mushroom will absorb exogeneously applied tryptophan.

Plants for example, react to indole, indole acetic acid and indole butyric acid yet they don't respond to applications of the amino acid tryptophan.

If consider the cycle of tryptophan..
Plants make the tryptophan and your cow or horse eats them....

Now some of of the tryptophan gets absorbed into the animal, the excess gets eatin by the microbes in the intestines.

Things like E. coli, a very common crap bacti digest tryptophan into indole.

It would seem that manure should contain indole and be virtually devoid of tryptophan.

5-HTP is not tryptophan, it is 5 hydoxy-tryptophan. It is an amino acid one step closer to serotonin; tryptophan > 5-HTP > 5-HT(serotonin). It is interesting to note that Panaeoli are capable of accumulating 5 substituted indoles like 5-HTP and serotonin, Psilocybes are not. Psilocybes presumably do not have the enzymatic machinery to create or deal with 5-HTP.

Likewise tryptamine is an amino acid one step closer than tryptophan to psilocin. The metabolic pathway to psilocin in mushrooms goes through tryptophan > tryptamine > psilocin.

Many species of mushrooms accumulate free form tryptophan that they presumably create from related indoles. It is an interesting speculation that adding indoles might provide building blocks for psilocin, but since the metabolic pathway leads through tryptophan, I seriously doubt it would be superior to adding tryptophan.

The addition of tryptophan is supposed to increase potency slightly (Gartz), but not nearly to the degree that added tryptamine does. This is speculated to be because there is excess enzymatic capacity to convert tryptamine > psilocin, but not so much enzymatic capacity to convert tryptophan > tryptamine.

Tryptophan is the raw material for the biosynthesis of several important compounds. Probably most notable is vitamin B3 (niacin). It is not surprising that most mushroom species are loaded with Vitamin B3, given the tendancy to accumulate tryptophan. It is probable that the production of psilocin from tryptophan in mushrooms is a minor metabolic pathway. Probably most tryptophan is used for the creation of other compounds like niacin, such that there is a feedback loop in the enzymatic machinery to conserve tryptophan from converting to psilocin. The existance of such a feedback loop would limit how successful any "doping" attempts can be.

"Doping" experiments would be interesting (i've never tried any), but I assume that they can never be cost or effort effective compared to just growing larger batches of non-doped shrooms.

DD

[This message has been edited by Doktor Dung (edited May 15, 2000).]

I haven't found a definitive answer for the exact metabolic pathway used by mushrooms to produce psiloc(yb)in, but I am interested. I'm assuming that the NH₂ group attached to the carbon chain in tryptamine is converted to N(CH₃)₂ and the OH group is added to the position 4 in the carbon ring to produce psilocin.

Why would a mushroom that really isn't that pretty and grows on shit need to contain a chemical deterrant in order to keep humans from eating them? Maybe it isn't a deterrant afterall. Maybe it was the Native Americans' education system.