Project idea: Psychedelic Yeast

What would it take, to make yeast that make psilocin/psilocybin?

The relevant enzymes are already present in “magic mushrooms” and yeast is also a fungus. Psilocybin-producing yeast have already been engineered in an academic lab.

These yeast also produced a lot of psilocin (the dephosphorylated analog) as a side product, but that’s OK because psilocin is actually the active molecule.

Understandably, the researchers aren’t about to share their yeast. Neither did they publish the full DNA sequences that they used.

But they published enough so that a skilled researcher can replicate their work.

This table shows their transgenes. They also list PCR primers in the supplementary information.

Now, I’m not a yeast biologist, but expressing 5 transgenes doesn’t sound too difficult. And yeast can be grown at home quite easily (I did it in high school).

This could be a case study in “can home biologists do moderately difficult microbial engineering?”