{"id":559,"date":"2023-09-21T08:25:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T15:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/?p=559"},"modified":"2023-09-21T10:52:11","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T17:52:11","slug":"caamtech-collaboration-investigates-terpene-production-in-magic-mushrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/caamtech-collaboration-investigates-terpene-production-in-magic-mushrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"CaaMTech Collaboration Investigates Terpene Production in Magic Mushrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Scientists at The Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology,<a href=\"https:\/\/caam.tech\/caamtech-collaborates-with-the-leibniz-institute-for-natural-product-research-to-investigate-psychedelic-mushrooms\/\"> working in collaboration with CaaMTech<\/a>, recently reported new results investigating terpene-producing enzymes in \u201cmagic\u201d mushrooms. These results were recently published in the journal <em>ChemBioChem<\/em> in a paper titled, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/cbic.202300511\">A \u2018Magic Mushroom\u2019 Multi-Product Sesquiterpene Synthase<\/a>.\u201d <em>Psilocybe <\/em>\u201cmagic\u201d mushrooms\u2019 best known component, psilocybin, is a prodrug of the potent 5-HT<sub>2A <\/sub>agonist and powerful psychedelic compound, psilocin. However, psilocybin co-exists in \u201cmagic\u201d mushrooms with other, less-studied, and structurally similar compounds whose roles and pharmacological properties are poorly understood.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<em>Psilocybe <\/em>\u2018magic mushrooms\u2019 are chemically well understood for their psychotropic tryptamines. However, the diversity of their other specialized metabolites, in particular terpenoids, has largely remained an open question,\u201d&nbsp; wrote the publication\u2019s authors. \u201cYet, knowledge on the natural product background is critical to understand if other compounds modulate the psychotropic pharmacological effects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Terpenes are a class of compounds commercially used as food and flavor additives and are responsible for some of the entourage effects in cannabis.&nbsp; But little is known about the role and presence of terpenes in fungi.&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/caam.tech\/caamtech-collaboration-proves-diversity-in-magic-mushroom-chemistry\/\">The presence of terpenes in <em>Psilocybe<\/em> mushrooms was discovered by the collaboration in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<em>Psilocybe<\/em> terpenoid metabolism is surprisingly poorly understood, even though other basidiomycete members of this class of natural products demonstrated remarkable structural diversity and biological effects,\u201d the authors explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The researchers conducted genomic sequences of various <em>Psilocybe<\/em> species. The sequences uncovered \u201can unexpected wealth of genes\u201d expected to encode sesquiterpene synthases.&nbsp; One such synthase, CubA, was characterized by the scientists <em>in vitro <\/em>and <em>in vivo<\/em> and identified as a multifunctional sesquiterpene synthase<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s amazing that these mushrooms were once regarded as merely psilocybin sources,\u201d said CaaMTech CEO, Dr. Andrew Chadeayne. \u201cProfessor Hoffmeister\u2019s group continues to establish themselves as the undeniable experts in magic mushroom chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Genomic sequences of various Psilocybe species revealed an unexpected wealth of genes encoding sesquiterpene synthases<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562,"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions\/562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caam.tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}