A question concerning Marijuana..

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by machaon, Nov 26, 2001.

  1. machaon Registered Senior Member

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    I was hoping that someone on this forum, who is better versed in the science of genetics, could help me out with a certain quandry. Many people in the US would like to see Marijuana legalized for medical and recreational use. This is not likely to happen until truly free elections are possible. I was simply wondering how difficult it would be to consolidate funding so that a lab(either legitimite or underground) could be retained to conduct research on isolating the THC producing gene so that it could be possible to create, say a THC producing Tomato plant? Or mabye THC producing Hop plants? What level of technology would be required, and would it be financialy feasible to undertake such a task? If anyone can help me with this, I would be grateful.
     
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  3. esp Registered Senior Member

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    TetraHydraCannabinol / Cannabinal

    You may not be aware of new developments in the UK.
    Semi-decriminalisation of cannibis has begun. The maximum sentence for trafficking has been lowered from 14 years to five, and sentencing for possession has been reduced to two years from five.
    The Home Secretary's directive to the police is roughly as follows:
    Persons in possession of cannibis are not to be arrested unless the possession is linked to violent crime.
    The UK may therefore be a significant target for fundraising with reference to subsidising a research lab.
     
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  5. chrisy Registered Member

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    rather not a tomato though

    I would feel safer personally if you would use a really safe branch of some fungi (i.e. really dependent on some external added nutrients, and notcrossing, welll contained etc), and use that, as i am sure pharmacists would advise you rather than using a plant.


    The idea to illegally create a THC tomato is very irresonsible. As for now the knowledge, even of the large companies (despite of what they want you to believe) on the effects of the changing of genes in plants is extremely low. I've done some reading on the Roundup Ready soy and found
    - unexplained yield lag
    - possible damaged stress-reaction pathways, resulting in adapted lignine content resulting in broken stems
    - higher amounts of the fusarium fungus in fields that are used for a longer time
    - changed nutrient content, especially the aromatic amino acids.
    - several unexpected bits and pieces of DNA

    Further the GM plants cannot possibly be contained, for example
    - the taco bell hype (or scandal if you like)
    - the native maize(corn) in Mexico (gene source of maize!) are being comtaminated
    - patent discussions
    - multi-resistent canola plants in Canada


    If you still want to make this THC crop, you may want to look for a plant with the most similar biochemical pathways. So find what are the precursors of THC and see if you can find another plant with a similar content. Then make the tomato infertile etc.




    In the Netherlands, where you can grow a handful of cannabis plants (about 5) without expecting harrasment, the quality of the plant has been much improved. By selection and breeding.

    It's a bit crowded in the Netherlands though.
     
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  7. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    Crowded?? How do you mean?? By Marijuana plants???

    Can't be crowded enough there in the Netherlands. There is a Coffee-shop at every streetcorner...very nice.

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    They have a nice pill in the Netherlands also which you can get at the prescription by the doctor.

    Because of the real good quality of the Marijuana itself, it is used by certain diseases, like to ease pain coming from the nerve-system and cancer and other diseases. It seems to be working pretty good, for there are a lot of humans who use Marijuana now a days to ease their pain.

    The THC is the most important ingredient of this Herb. It is a Natural drug, an Herb, no garbage added.

    So they found a way to produce a pill which has the same effect as Marijuana, but it is not exactly the same as the Herb. It seems rather impossible to me to make a pill which has the same effects as the Marijuana itself.

    Tomatoes or other food with artificial added THC seems not relevant to me.

    You can use the Marijuana itself in your cooking if you want to...just like other spices you add to your food. Just put it in at a later time and it will work perfectly.

    Or bake a nice cake with it...Oh what joy you have an hour after eating it. For several hours.

    It is legal too, you are allowed to drive your car and have 30 grams of Marijuana in your possession for your own use.

    Guess the US government is old fashioned here. But hey...what do you want?
    The US government want to have control over their inhabitants and then you are really not allowed to do any thing which they disaprove with.

    Make a nice THC bomb...Perhaps they like that better.
    Then drop it at the White House please, if everybody is there and perhaps they stop bombing the Earth...

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  8. esp Registered Senior Member

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    As I said earlier, even the UK gonernment is starting to come round to it. Legality isn't far off.
     
  9. Porfiry Nomad Registered Senior Member

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    4,127
    The easiest thing to do would to generate a THC producing bacterium (probably E. coli), and infect yourself with it (E. coli is a natural resident of the intestines). Then enjoy your life.

    Or is this dangerously close to the ideal of wiring up the brain with a constant supply of pleasure chemicals? Thanks to biotechnology, this beautiful future may not be far off.

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  10. flamethrower Junior Registered Senior Member

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  11. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    Porfiry, that is a great idea. You know how to realise it? I want to be your 'guineapig then. Imagine...

    Cool...

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  12. scilosopher Registered Senior Member

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    435
    Marijuana has over 2000 psychoactive substances in it though THC delta 9 I believe is the most abundant. There is no substitute. The pill doesn't compare to good herb, though it is fun ... at least that's what im told ; )

    Actually hops and marijuana are kind of out there by their lonesome in the plant world ... interesting that they are the basis of two of the most popular drugs consumed globablly. I wonder if beer has a bit of a psychoactive nature that is hard to detect next to all the alcohol. Like that stuff Van Gogh was on but less powerful. Or maybe we need to start burning sugar in beer to activate it ...

    The ecoli idea is an interesting one, but desensitization might be an issue. Also if the engineered bacteria were pumping out enough THC to do the trick in the stomach (much lower efficiency delivery roue than smoking) it would probably lose out to the other bacteria and die off. Besides dosage control would be nice. What we really need is a new organ under conscious control that releases a nice coctail at will ... something like the adrenal gland but easier to control. The ecoli idea is much more practically realizeable of course.

    relating to memory loss issues, I think it mainly might be the fact that it changes your mental state significantly and like studying for a test under the same circumstances you take it, when you go to remember something if you're not just as high it's harder because the storing/retrieving functions are no longer reverse operators or something. If that's the case another system of delivery than smoking and more accurate dosage control could theroretically remove most of the real problems with marijuana use.

    Then the issue becomes why the real world is such that we want to go somewhere else. Then again a lot of religions have people wanting to die and go to heaven. I once saw an amusing button - "I don't have a drug problem, I have a reality problem."

    I just had a funny thought on the ecoli thing. What if they actually were selected for on the population level because they made people eat more. Until you're hungry all the time and stuck in one long munchie binge???
     
  13. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    Great reply Scilosopher

    But I don't have memory loss...yet.

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    I don't even smoke it at the moment and didn't smoke it all day long, before.

    It is the way you handle the Marijuana. If you use it from waking up til going to bed, it is certainly not the right way. Then you will have problems during your life if you by accident 'wake up' all of a sudden, by lack of Marijuana.

    Now a days it is not necessarry any more to only smoke it, if you don't want to. You can buy an Inhalor and inhale the pure Marijuana without smoking. In the Netherlands, that is possible, for quite a while now. Because of the Marijuana used for mecical treatments. Humans who have problems and don't want to smoke, can do it like that, with an Inhalor.

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    About the being hungry thing. That is such a nice side affect of it. But it doesn't stay that way. It is not always so that you want to eat more when you are stoned. But often the Marijuana makes you want to eat something nice, yes.
    Great for the humans who want to gain weight, but not for the humans who are too fat.

    So, no good pleasure Herb for the fat Americans...

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  14. Porfiry Nomad Registered Senior Member

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    Good call. This would definitely be a problem. Of course, you could always rig it up such that the engineered bacteria could have an unnatural antibiotic resistence (just throw in the gene along with the THC production mechanism), and then you could ensure that you're always taking low doses of that antibiotic to select for the THC-bacteria.

    As for dosage control, you could also rig it up with a simple regulator such that the THC-gene is transcribed only when in the presence of something else -- say milk-sugars. Then, whenver you have a glass of milk or cheese you activate THC production. And think how innocent it would appear! My mom could give me milk and cookies and I would *really* enjoy them.

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  15. scilosopher Registered Senior Member

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    Banshee,

    I've never used and inhalor, but I hear you can't really taste it or tell how much you're getting. As you said if you're going to smoke, how you do it matters. So being able to tell the amount you're getting matters. Also the flavor of good nug can be so yummy, the whole extra level of conditioning and imprinting makes it capable of levels of enjoyment up there with good food. Like sushi.

    BTW, does anyone else get a body high from sushi? I noticed it first there, but I think fish in general give me a bit of a buzz ...

    I was mainly joking about the munchies ... it was just a funny picture that popped into my head.
     
  16. scilosopher Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    435
    Porfiry,

    Technically an antibiotic would do the trick, but taking regular antibiotics has negative side effects expecially in terms of screwing up the natural good bacteria ecosystem of the gut. I'm not sure how bad the effect is with low doses, but there it would help the selection less.

    Putting it under an inducible promoter is a great idea, though something more exotic might make it easier to not have to watch what you eat when you want to be sober.
     
  17. Porfiry Nomad Registered Senior Member

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    4,127
    Sushi, eh?

    Well, I do enjoy raw salmon more than perhaps any other food. I will have to examine its effects more closely next time.
     
  18. Porfiry Nomad Registered Senior Member

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    4,127
    Well, an alternate to constant low doses of antibiotic would be an occasional high dose of antibiotic while innoculating yourself with the engineered bacteria. The hope being that you can have the engineered bacteria dominate population-wise at least temporarily. Eventually things would return to normal.


    And, of course, I forgot to mention that the selected expression of the THC gene would reduce any negative selection of the engineered bacteria, since there is significant metabolic cost only when the inducer is present.
     
  19. scilosopher Registered Senior Member

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    435
    Profiry, I guess that all depends on how much you induce it ...

    speaking of fish and memory I somehow forgot to go to sushi happy hour...

    I like to end sentences with three dots ... anyone else hooked on that ???
     
  20. esp Registered Senior Member

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    908
    scilosopher ...

    Don't take this the wrong way...
    But I find the practice of ending sentences with three dots unusual, wierd and interesting...
    And enticing...
    I will try it...
    And report my findings...

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  21. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    I like to end my posts with three dots. Perhaps a case of memory loss, caused by the Marijuana?

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    Forget to let go of the *dot* key on my keyboard.

    And please, no artificial garbage with that great, natural pleasure Herb, called Marijuana. Bake a nice cake with it or spread it over your food before you eat it.

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    Antibiotics have a lot of nasty side affects, which the Marijuana doesn't have...(notice the dots?) Momentary memory loss...

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  22. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    Putting three dots is a nice way to finish off a thought by inviting the reader to think where you might be going.

    MJ use through an activing substance. Interesting how many times you might get an unexpected dose through the use of food additives and the trigger substance used in a recipe. Oh, please don't let it be caffine. The highways are a mess as it is with cell phones and drivers...
     
  23. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    No drivers license here. Never cared for it.

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    Just a bycicle and two legs to walk on.

    So you noticed all the garbage that is added to our food and drinking supplies? Good. Do something about it. For it is outrageous how much artificial garbage is added to the foodsupplies now a days. Even corn and weat are modified.

    Jezus, you sound very depressed by all those adds in your food.

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    Smoke a nice joint...it'll do you good.

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    Without garbage added. Lets keep it that way.

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    (notice the three dots are missing!)
     

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