Genetically engineering tobacco plants could enable a more sustainable production method for psychedelic drugs, which are increasingly in demand for research and medical uses
I grew up on a tobacco farm, hardly any aspect is mechanized.
To harvest it:
Put a six foot stick in the ground
Put a metal spear tip on top.
Cut plant with hatchet
Impale on stick
After like 6-8 plants, start a new stick.
Then after a couple weeks load it on a wagon by hand, then hang it in a tobacco barn (aka death trap) where you’re a couple stories high doing the splits, and people pass the sticks up to you and you hang and spread them to dry.
Months later you climb back up and bring it all down.
Then manually remove each and every single leaf.
Grade it.
And compress it into bales using hydraulic jacks.
For tomatoes:
Drive a tractor over the field
Dump tomatoes
Like…
I’m just saying if we need a lot, this is t the means for production. If it’s just testing and it’ll end up somewhere else, no worries.
Yes, this is basic research, which generally starts with common model organisms that many labs have access to. This increases reproducibility of the early results. The study mentions expression of the relevant genes and proteins in the buds as well, and also calls out one of the pathways in tomato, so perhaps the next step could be to test it in other nightshades and their fruit
Tobacco industry funded a huge amount of molecular biology in transgenic tobacco and it ended up being a well understood plant model system to express anything.
Lol. They aren’t currently doing it for large scale production.
They also claim that while they could do it, they haven’t modified the plants to make it where their seeds will produce the drugs. Only the current modified plant.
They also said the could just as easily do this to tomato, corn, or potato.
Still tho…
It’s the same process to harvest leaves.
I grew up on a tobacco farm, hardly any aspect is mechanized.
To harvest it:
Put a six foot stick in the ground
Put a metal spear tip on top.
Cut plant with hatchet
Impale on stick
After like 6-8 plants, start a new stick.
Then after a couple weeks load it on a wagon by hand, then hang it in a tobacco barn (aka death trap) where you’re a couple stories high doing the splits, and people pass the sticks up to you and you hang and spread them to dry.
Months later you climb back up and bring it all down.
Then manually remove each and every single leaf.
Grade it.
And compress it into bales using hydraulic jacks.
For tomatoes:
Drive a tractor over the field
Dump tomatoes
Like…
I’m just saying if we need a lot, this is t the means for production. If it’s just testing and it’ll end up somewhere else, no worries.
I appreciate when people have RL experience in a niche topic. Best part of online discussions, thank you for the insight!
Yes, this is basic research, which generally starts with common model organisms that many labs have access to. This increases reproducibility of the early results. The study mentions expression of the relevant genes and proteins in the buds as well, and also calls out one of the pathways in tomato, so perhaps the next step could be to test it in other nightshades and their fruit
Yeah, was just surprised tobacco is a common base for experiments.
And that explains why it’s used here, it’s never going to be at scale
Tobacco industry funded a huge amount of molecular biology in transgenic tobacco and it ended up being a well understood plant model system to express anything.
Lol. They aren’t currently doing it for large scale production.
They also claim that while they could do it, they haven’t modified the plants to make it where their seeds will produce the drugs. Only the current modified plant.
They also said the could just as easily do this to tomato, corn, or potato.
Tobacco is special in some regards though. They use it for other stuff, like injecting dna into viruses or some weird science shit. I forget.