Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Looking to Invent the Hempmatoe!

OK, we need some super hipster young college brainiacs looking for an adventure...imagine putting THC in Oranges so that you can get high drinking a glass of Orange Juice...it's been done. So, if it has been done with oranges, it only makes sense that it could be done with other plants, other fruits and vegetables...seems to me, that a THC organic salad would be just the way for our 20/30 somethings to start their evening, a great way for us Boomers to fend off our aches and pains. So, I would love to find some adventuresome people to do a bit of high tech DNA magic to create Tomatoes, Cucumbers and watermellon with THC...one of the reasons I am choosing these three specific fruits/vegetables, is they are a staple in juicing, a constant in almost every salad, and imagine how many seeds the first successful generation of seeds once the host plant has accepted the change into its genome, and passes the now inherited THC DNA down to each successive generation. What's the DEA and the FDA going to do when the THC found in Marijuana is now available in a HOST OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES we eat on a daily basis!




Biochem 101: How to design a Cannabis-equivalent citrus plant


Step One:
Biochemically isolate all the required enzymes for the production of THC.


Step Two:
Perform N-terminal sequencing on isolated enzymes, design degenerate PCR (polymerase chain reaction) primers and amplify the genes.


Step Three:
Clone genes into an agrobacterial vector by introducing the desired piece of DNA into a plasmid containing a transfer or T-DNA. The mixture is transformed into Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a gram negative bacterium.


Step Four:
Use the Agrobacterium tumefaciens to infect citrus plants after wounding. The transfer DNA will proceed to host cells by a mechanism similar to conjugation. The DNA is randomly integrated into the host genome and will be inherited.

5 comments:

  1. Hmmm. Biochemically isolating all the required enzymes for THC production is easier said than done. Once the genes are isolated, and amino acid sequences are generated, you would infect with agrobacterium yes, and hope for successful integration into the host genome without your host plant growing up all we-todd-ed...the latter process could take months or years..

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  2. ...I think tomatoes would be a more practical host plant. This would be really fun to do. PCR machines are not so expensive anymore -- comparatively speaking. I'm familiar with the processes after step one, but I've not really worked with isolating specific enzymes although I've worked with people who are good at that...the specific kits needed for that aren't all that expensive either..well, depends on how you look at it I guess..

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  3. Hi Kana:

    Have a feeling we could easily MAKE THIS HAPPEN if we could find the right college students looking for an adventure.

    The professor who created the THC Orange Trees was shipping out FREE SEEDS for several weeks before the DEA came knocking on his door...wish I could get some of those seeds, but there are OUT THERE. Meanwhile, I agree that using the tomato plant might be the quickest easiest way...especially since, once successful you could amass and ship out such large quantities of easily replicable seed stocks that it would be too hard and complicated to stop.

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  4. ooh...went to pubmed database and did a quick search and found the following, "Several biosynthetic enzymes including geranylpyrophosphate:olivetolate geranyltransferase, tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA) synthase, cannabidiolic acid (CBDA) synthase and cannabichromenic acid (CBCA) synthase have been purified from young rapidly expanding leaves of C. sativa.", in the abstract of a study. Here is the following link http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17691992?ordinalpos=10&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
    Anyhow, so there already exists published methods on how to isolate..so its just a matter of following instructions and having a lab..and the guts..lol

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  5. LOL...I have the guts....now just need some instructions and a lab...I'll find the lab at the proper time and make sure I don't make that knowledge public...once the Hempmatoes have been invented, the seeds distributed, it does not matter.

    In the mean time, anyone have any of those Hemp Orange seeds they want to share?

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