Magic mushrooms were used in traditional ceremonies and for entertainment purposes for millennia. Nevertheless, a new study showed that mushrooms developed the ability to do the same psychoactive substance twice. The discovery has important consequences both for our understanding of the role of these mushrooms in nature and for their medical potential.
Magic mushrooms produce psilocybin, which your body turns into its active form, psilocin, when you use it. Psilocybin Rose is in popularity In the 1960s and ultimately it was classified as List 1 drug in the USA in 1970 and how Class A drug In 1971, in the UK, designations provided to drugs that have high potential for abuse and the lack of adopted medical use. This has laid an end to the study of medical use of psilocybin for decades.
But recent clinical trials have shown that psilocybin It can reduce depression Heaviness, suicidal thoughts and chronic anxiety. Given its potential For medical methods of treatment, there is resumption of interest Understanding how psilocybin is produced in nature and how we can create it stable.
New researchheaded by the researcher of pharmaceutical microbiology, Dirk Hoffmeister, from the University of Friedrich Schiller Ien, I found it Mushrooms can make psilocybin in two different ways, using various types of enzymes. It also helped researchers find a new way to make psilocybin in the laboratory.
Based on work, led by Hoffmeister, enzymes of two types of non -related mushrooms, which were not related to them, developed independently of each other and took different routes to create the same compound.
This is a process known as converging evolution, which means that unrelated living organisms develop two different ways to create the same sign. One example is that caffeineWhere different plants, including coffee, tea, cocoa and guarana, independently developed the ability to produce a stimulant.
This is the first time that convergent evolution was observed in two organisms that belong to the fungal kingdom. Interestingly, two mushrooms in question has very different lifestyle. Inocybe CorydalinaAlso known as Greenflush FibRacap and the object of the Hoffmeister study, growing due to the roots of various types of trees. Psilocybe mushrooms, on the other hand, traditionally known as magic mushrooms, live on nutrients that they acquire, decomposing dead organic matter, such as decaying wood, grass, roots or manure.
