| this discovery will likely have little impact on the taste of what's being consumed, or the subjective quality of the trip. the bad taste is the result of either a) the flesh of the mushrooms, or b) (in the case of isolated psilocybin) the alkaloid being a bitter "chemical" tasting chemical. in either case, the problem can be mitigated without understanding the mushroom's psilocybin synthesis pathway. the bad trip has to do with the alkaloid itself, and a the reaction of particular brain that's been dosed with it at a particular time. again, understanding the mushroom's synthesis path isn't going to change the end result. it might help chemists discover new and worthwhile paths to synthesizing other tryptamines with a lower potential for bad trips, but it's not like there's a shortage of viable methods for producing novel tryptamines at the moment. still, really really cool discovery. not trying to downplay that. just saying the parent and GP i'm replying to are talking about things that are pretty much orthogonal to this discovery. EDIT: ok, i can imagine one situation where this could impact flavor: in a world where psilocybin is legal, one might imagine boutique engineered mushroom strains that have desirable flavor characteristics, and which produce psilocybin. this discovery could help with engineering that sort of thing. i don't actually think that's a worthwhile use of anyone's time (again, there are ways to mitigate the taste issue, and determining the amount of mushrooms you eat by anything other than the desired intensity of the trip seems like a flat out bad idea). but still, i stand partially corrected. |