Many of you may have read the old article about the guy who grew oranges that naturally produced THC. That was only a hoax. But, with the breakthroughs in genetic science in the past decade, its really not far out of reach, if out of reach at all. Anyone that knows a thing or two about botany or whatever will know what agrobacterium tumaficiens is, and for those of you who don't, its a bacteria that thrives in the soil around plants, and when there's a cut in the plant or whatever, it induces a big nasty welt on the tree. (i.e. tree warts) The way it does this is by linking some of its own DNA with the plants DNA, once infected. The TDNA is the tumor inducing plasmid, which is what makes the welts. Now the way most everyone else has made a transgenic plant is by replacing the Tumor Inducing plasmid (TI plasmid) with the coding for whatever trait you want the recieving plant to carry on, using electroporatin or heat shock. Then you have to cut certain parts of the plants stem (for the life of me, I can't remember what they're called) that are responsible for basic cell growth. (basically they're stem cells, no pun intended) Put those little cuttings in a petri dish of horomone solution and make an incision and infect them with your bacterium, and you'll have yourself a growing plant in a month or so... Yes, it will grow the same plant from the seeds it produces. I mean, think of the possibilities with marijuana... You could actually make the oranges, or grow yourself an oak tree that produces thc... Its almost endless, seeing as that they've mapped out the gene responsible for the production of thc...
weed isnt all THC... what about the other cannabinoids that give marijuana its 'high' you'd basically have a marinol (or other synthetic THC) producing plant rather than a marijuana high packaged in that plant... but yes, it is possible
Im currently studying Biotechnology I think its the future... edit: Someday... Weedplants as big as 10m palm tree and with a optimum cannabinoid production thats been pre-established and engineered by the grower.
Yeah, the possibilities are endless. But what about what's likely to happen? Is a biotech company likely to invest in cannabinoid research if the only place their THC-infused-milk-producing cows are going to be legal is the Netherlands and their only customers coffeeshops in Amsterdam? Of course, it would be a great way to undermine prohibition. Genetically-engineer psychoactive varieties of your everyday plants and release them into the wild. How could the government ever know if that tomato you were growing in your window-sill was just a tomato... or something a whole lot funner? Genetic testing is expensive, and it is just a little tomato plant anyway...
Honestly I think talk like this is what scares people away from biotechnology, sorry to break the news guys but people who don't smoke weed don't want transgenic plants modified to produce heavy quantities of drugs to be anywhere, let alone released into earths general biosphere.
No, it's the overall uncontrollable nature of biotech in general. The process for inserting genes to produce THC and, say, venom, are exactly the same. It's just different genes is all. And traits spread through the biosphere so quickly. Anybody could do anything.
Yeah I've thought about the other ingredients, too. But the catch is that you would have to genetically map out the strains cannabinols to get the full experience of smoking it or vaporizing. It would make it a lot more expensive...and arduous. Which is why I'm perfectly fine with just thc...
Perhaps this kind of talk, but I doubt that so many people have mentioned genetically enhancing regular plants to produce thc that they scared others off of it... It's probably just the fact that you can be able to almost create anything you want....Hell, that scares me.