{"id":33221,"date":"2019-02-27T10:00:09","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T18:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2019\/02\/27\/uc-berkeley-scientists-engineer-thc-producing-yeast\/"},"modified":"2019-02-27T12:38:53","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T20:38:53","slug":"uc-berkeley-scientists-engineer-thc-producing-yeast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2019\/02\/27\/uc-berkeley-scientists-engineer-thc-producing-yeast\/","title":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley Scientists Engineer THC-Producing Yeast"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

A new report in the renowned scientific journal Nature<\/em> details how synthetic biologists at the University of California Berkeley have genetically engineered yeast that can produce marijuana\u2019s main active ingredients of THC and CBD.<\/p>\n

This report is notable, researchers say, because this means that one has to do to create cannabinoids is feed the yeast with sugar. This has led researchers to make the call that in the future, this will be an easy and cheap way to produce pure cannabinoids that today are costly to extract from bud and flower materials.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the consumer, the benefits are high-quality, low-cost CBD and THC: you get exactly what you want from yeast,\u201d said Jay Keasling, a UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of bioengineering and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in a press release. \u201cIt is a safer, more environmentally friendly way to produce cannabinoids.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their announcement today, coinciding with the release of their study in Nature<\/em>, researchers noted the wider scientific possibility for the science of cannabis medicine, thanks to the discovery. This is because medical research on the dozens of other chemicals in marijuana (besides THC and CBD) is very difficult, given that many of the chemicals that researchers want to study occur in tiny quantities and it is expensive and challenging to isolate them from the plant.<\/p>\n

Thanks to this new yeast, Keasling noted, there is \u201cthe possibility of new therapies based on novel cannabinoids: the rare ones that are nearly impossible to get from the plant, or the unnatural ones, which are impossible to get from the plant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keasling has worked for years on using different strains of yeast to produce things like human growth hormone, insulin and blood clotting compounds, the press release noted.<\/p>\n

Yeast: A Greener Way To Grow?<\/h4>\n

In their press release about the groundbreaking research, UC Berkeley\u2019s media relations officer Robert Sanders argued that cannabinoid production through yeast was an environmentally friendly improvement on the way that cannabis is usually grown.<\/p>\n

\u201cCannabis cultivation is a prime example of an energy-intensive and environmentally-destructive industry,\u201d Sanders wrote, and added that many ways that scientists chemically synthesize is also toxic. But, he writes, \u201cKeasling has long sought to exploit yeast and bacteria as \u2018green\u2019 drug factories.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report made no note of California\u2019s many cultivators who emphasize regenerative farming<\/a> and use permaculture systems on their outdoor cannabis grows. Instead, they pointed to the farmers who pollute streams, drain watersheds and erode the ecosystem<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Inside the Study\u2019s Methods<\/h4>\n

The yeast study was conducted with the approval of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (of course<\/a>), and under the supervision of UC Berkeley postdoc Xiaozhou Luo and visiting graduate student Michael Reiter, who assembled the yeast in a series of chemical steps.<\/p>\n

The researchers wanted to get the yeast to create the CBGA cannabinoid<\/a> first, as this is the acidic precursor to the cannabinoid CBG, which is the building block and \u201cmother\u201d for cannabinoids like THC and CBD. One step, however, proved to be a roadblock: One of the enzymes that perform a key chemical step in making CBGA in the marijuana plant didn\u2019t work in yeast.<\/p>\n

Instead of trying to engineer a different way to get that enzyme to produce cannabinoids, Berkeley postdoc Leo d\u2019Espaux and graduate student Jeff Wong went back the plant itself and isolated a second enzyme, prenyl transferase. That enzyme accomplished the same task when genetically engineered into the yeast, which then effectively started producing CBGA, the press release stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt worked like gangbusters,\u201d Keasling said in the release.<\/p>\n

Following that, the researchers added another enzyme to the yeast\u2019s DNA to convert the CBGA into THCA<\/a>. A separate enzyme was added to create a way to get CBDA. Though the yeast is mostly pumping out these THC and CBD acidic precursors, the compounds still need to be separated from other byproducts in the process.<\/p>\n

Luo and Reiter discovered that the steps they took to create CBGA could be modified to have tons of potential. If they introduce a new starter chemical to the yeast now, then they can \u201cgenerate cannabinoids that do not exist in the plant itself,\u201d the release says.<\/p>\n

Commodifying the Cannabinoids<\/h4>\n

Since making the discovery, Keasling founded Demetrix Inc<\/a>., and then d\u2019Espaux and Wong joined him at the company.\u00a0 Demetrix has licensed the technology from UC Berkeley to use yeast fermentation to make cannabinoids, the release states.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe economics look really good,\u201d Keasling said. \u201cThe cost is competitive or better than that for the plant-derived cannabinoids. And manufacturers don\u2019t have to worry about contamination \u2014 for example, THC in CBD \u2014 that would make you high.\u201d<\/p>\n

TELL US,<\/strong> would you consume cannabinoids grown on yeast?<\/p>\n

The post UC Berkeley Scientists Engineer THC-Producing Yeast<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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\nRead More: UC Berkeley Scientists Engineer THC-Producing Yeast<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new report in the renowned scientific journal Nature details how synthetic biologists at the University of California Berkeley have genetically engineered yeast that can produce marijuana\u2019s main active ingredients of THC and CBD. This report is notable, researchers say, because this means that one has to do to createContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[605,50,1589,136,5,5693,420,8091,5694],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33222,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33221\/revisions\/33222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}