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-From a registered Mad Scientist

"From a certain point of view"
-Jedi Master Obiwan Kenobi (also a Mad Scientist tm)

In the future it could be perhaps accomplished but as of now I am aware of only a few successful examples of transplanting entire biosynthetic pathways from one organism into another.

Of course the real question is why would anyone spend their time and effort and money trying to do such a thing. The answer is nobody. Why? No commercial value.

[This message has been edited by Psilowarrior (edited December 16, 1999).]

I don't see why you couldn't cross breed them if they were sufficiently simmilar. At best you would get reproductive deficient offspring like a mule from a horse and donkey cross.

Later,
tweedy.

On a lighter note, you may have seen Paul Stamets books "Psilocybin Mushrooms of the world" and "Psilocybin Mushrooms and their allies" They describe many species of mushrooms that are not hallucinogenic normally, but in some cases it is reported. This is most likely because of the psilocybin producing gene being recessive. Experiments with these species may prove fruitful if one has the time, money, and patience for selective dikaryotic strain isolation. Or you could talk to mycophile, and get him to score you some mutagenic compounds. Anyways, no they could not be "cross bred" anyhow, because fungi do not reproduce sexually on a macroscopic level, and even if they could I would liken the process to trying to make a new organism by making a fish and a snake go at it.

Protoplasts are used in two areas of genetic manipulation, fusion and transformation.
Through protoplast fusion it is possible to bring together whole genomes of related (isogenic)or non-related strains and even different species promote recombination leading to the production of novel phenotypes.Protoplast fusion, therefore, can provide a mechanism to overcome natural incompatibility barriers that exist between different strains and species.

AARON

[This message has been edited by aaron (edited December 15, 1999).]

First, fuck dikaryotic strain isolation, that's not enough. It is entirely THEORETICALLY possible that if you isolated enough hyphae from hallucinogens, and tried to breed them with hyphae from non-hallucinogens, that eventually you could get two compatable hyphae. The problem is few here have the facilities for any kind of monokaryotic isolation, and certainly not the facilities to try this in literally billions of combinations. It could happen but it won't.

2 Anybody ever heard of transposons? The so-called "jumping genes". Basically they are DNA sequences that are able to literally detach themselves from the original organism and reattach themselves in the DNA of other organisms. To my knowledge they have only been studied in bacteriaphages, but I talked to a professor who thinks they could be present in more developed life-forms such as lower-fungi. Perhaps somebody from the shroomery wants to win the noble prize by discovering them in higher fungi? Possible, not gonna happen.
Genetic engineering is possible. Gene splicing is pretty common shit these days, but not with people growing hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Before any of this will ever happen, a "simple" genetic insertion of the psilocybe producing dna into a bacteria will happen. That is after the genome is sufficiently mapped, which it isn't. But, this new bacteria can be grown in large vats, and the psilocybe could be harvested. By using bacteria, the generation times are drastically reduced, and large batches could be made quickly. There simply isn't enough commercial demand for this though, the world would be flooded with a decades supply of psilocybin within the first month of production.
Any more science fiction fans out there. Remember, today's sci-fi is tommorrows reality.
But that's tommorrow, not today.
It can't be done, because it won't be done. If it is never done, then obviously it can't have happened, or it would have.

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-From a registered Mad Scientist

"From a certain point of view"
-Jedi Master Obiwan Kenobi (also a Mad Scientist tm)

All the lab procedures are a modification of this percedure. then read;
Genetic and Breeding of Edible Mushrooms edited by Shu-Ting Chang,John A.Buswell,and Philip G.Miles.(1993)

This is 23 year old technology and it been refined since then, and in my opinion its possible to do protoplast fusion, but not gene transfers at this time.Don't take my word about it, READ IT FOR YOURSELF.