The recent discovery and reproduction of psilocybin biosynthesis as happens in magic mushrooms opened door for more eco-friendly and maybe mass production of farmacological-grade psilocybin.

However... don't you think mushrooms will then lose their "magic" ?

I am quite anxious about some underground lab soon starting production of hundreds of grams of lab-grade psilocybin per day.

Psilocybin would then become cheap and available in a pill or powder form and anyone can have a smooth trip, knowing exactly the dose and can even reagent test it. None of this is possible with dried shrooms.

Who would then bother with growing and caring about medicinal mushrooms, if can easily get the power of entire batch in a single pill...

What do you think?

china already produces 4-aco-DMT on the ton scale, that hasn't really changed anything. I don't see why biosynthetic psilocybin would be any different. I think it will be a while too before its seen in the underground, unless its already in progress .

I think the agricultural revolution which made food so cheap that we now have an obesity epidemic in this country didn't stop people from growing carrots and potatos in their back yard.

How can one simply justify the time and physical effort to grow potatos and dig them up and wrangle the plant and care for it, when a 10lb bag goes on sale for $1.89 once a month at the grocery store. And yet, people still grow potatos.

Industrialization has made virtually everything you could ever want a mass market commodity item and yet, people are still weaving table runners by hand, knitting hand made sweaters scarves and hats, building dining room tables from trees they felled themselves.

The fact that psilocybin can be made synthetically will not in any discourage mushroom hobbyists from growing their own mushrooms


As to the "magic". I've had more magical and mystical experiences in a handful of 4-aco trips than a hundred mushroom trips.

With home grown mushrooms, one can be sure to get exactly that.
It is also relatively easy to do and relatively safe, even in countries where these mushrooms are made illegal.

With some powder you can't be sure what it is, actually. Testing it is cumbersome and expensive.

I hope the enzymatic process of creating the molecule will be made available for hobbyists though as potency in mushrooms caries so wildly, you never know what you are getting. Perhaps that can be a good thing though.

In any case, it does not detract from its magic for me. The experience isn't about matter or substance anyways.

I agree with the others that psilocybin mushroom strains will always be available in one way or another, and while not everyone will be on that train I'm sure many of the enthusiasts of mushrooms will continue to grow them. There's something special to be said for growing psilocybins, there just is, not sure what it is, maybe just the fact that you grew something from [almost] nothing. I've always enjoyed growing them more than taking them, the alchemical process, lead into gold, just the fact that you grew these to have this experience..

I've found 4-aco [worked with 4-aco a bit] and psiolcybin mush to be near identical. There's subtle difference with some of the cube strains I feel, though it could be entirely subjective and/or splitting hairs.

No magic lost, different strokes for different folks. The spores aren't going anywhere, even if there's lbs of 4-aco littering the underground, don't matter, you're always going to have those mycophiles, those diehards / people that enjoy the process.

I've always felt the experience with mushrooms, cannabis, dmt, ayahuasca, the whole experience starts well before you throw that cup to your lips or nom up those dried mushrooms - at least for me, the entire process is and has been part of the ride for me.

Nothing wrong with not wanting to go through all this and just cap up some 4-aco and throw it back though. Nothing against those folk though.

edit: only worked with 4-aco, lowerish dosages a few times

Nothing will change. The enzymatic production of psilocybin was just a PR stunt from an university - ist does not matter at all.

If at some point there is a need for chemically pure psilocybin, the pharmaceutical industry will satisfy it. Sandoz could do it in the 50s, why should it be any problem today?

For people growing at home: why should you care? Growing mushrooms is not hard and the yield is good. Compared to handling genetically modified bacteria, extraction, purification, and weighting on an expensive scale. Why would you go away from mushrooms?

I agree here, it's a relatively easy process, and for a relatively low budget you can have plenty of mushrooms for some years give or take. Once you learn - you can try to hone things down, then the whole process becomes easier and easier over time I think, more interesting imo. So many great resources out there for these things, plus you learn some things.

It's not as much a problem as the current synthetic process (though little improved since Hofmann) is costly and inefficient. At least it requires many steps of organic synthesis, many solvents and other chemicals (e.g. the expensive and fragile phosphorylating agent). On the other hand, once you have a biosynthesis setup, you can produce huge quantities basically in a single pot (I know it's not THAT easy).

I was afraid the process will evenutally become so efficient that some factory in china will start producing tons of psilocybin flooding Europe and US...

I am happy building a community around mushrooms (just discovering there is much more to mushrooms than just the actives - a variety of medicinal mushrooms and the way they heal the soil etc.) and I was afraid people around will lose interest in them because of cheap pills/powder, be it fellow growers or those who just like to consume them.

But I am a bit paranoid here, I admit. There are many synthetic cannabinoids or cathinones, for example, and people still grow cannabis and chew khat (hell even chew coca) and enjoy being part of that community, having more connection to this natural gift, instead of taking some shroom pills without even knowing where they came from.

They only produced about a milligram or two of psilocybin with their scaled assay. Its important to study these biosynthetic pathways and enzymes. But I doubt it would be economically feasible when compared to just growing and isolating the compound from mushrooms. Mushrooms can produce 1-1.5% dry weight of psilocybin and they are easy to grow. Scaling these enzymatic reactions to produce many kilograms of material might not be an easy thing to do.

Its similar with bacteria or yeast genetically engineered to produced compounds like THC or morphine. Low yields often come from these processes. Cannabis plants can pump out 20% THC levels in flowers and poppies yield more morphine then engineered yeast. In many cases this genetic engineering is forcing an organism to produce a compound that in high enough concentrations its toxic to organism. So its not easy to get that all to work on a large scale. Still easier to just grow some plants that already make the compound.

Thanks for sheding light on this, burnt.
Also thank you all guys for your perspectives.

https://cen.acs.org/arti...zyme-mystery-solved.html


Here is the article if you haven't seen. Sure researchers and journalists like to hype up their work. But it is directed towards industrial production.

If you can produce psilocybin in a fermentation vat, it will be more cost effective to scale than mushroom growing followed by extraction.

This isn't at all very different to how ergotamine is produced industrially, they don't go picking rye. The culture was worked with over years to develop a strain that could be a high producer in fermentation vats.

Again though, not sure why not just 4-aco-DMT, way more 'cost effective' but of course its because if psilocybin does become a pharmaceutical, it will be the first to get through, so there is the incentive.

I guess the synthesis has never been improved as there was no need to do so. The molecule is very simple to produce if needed and production costs are not an issue. If you compare this to what the pharmaceutical industry does to produce hiv drugs this is hardly a Monday morning.

I see the potential value of 4-aco-dmt as it makes dosing easier if you are familiar with volumetric dosing. As long as you don’t get Pharma grade chemicals, I would always go for the mushroom.

Even if a way was found that's cheaper and easier than fruiting mycelium, I can't see the actual thing ever losing it's cachet. Maybe living on a space station or something would make biosynthesis more feasible than growing, but then again..

Kathy Maclean just shared this on Facebook as a response to this blog post, and I thought it was relevant to the discussion.



I haven't had time to read the entire article she linked, but what I've read so far seems full of some pretty flagrant misconceptions about the nature of psychedelic experiences and their role in mental health.

Needless to say I'm skeptical of the source, but I think the point he's ultimately trying to get at is important and worth including in the conversation.