Sequencing the Weed Genome 315
GNUman writes "Maybe soon we'll be able to genetically modify humans so that a specific action (e.g., tapping your nose, pinching your ear) triggers the release of THC directly from your own cells. From the Nature blog post: 'At last, the field of genomics has something to offer Cheech and Chong. DNA sequencing hit a new high last night with the midnight release of the Cannabis sativa genome. The raw sequence was posted on Amazon's EC2 public cloud computing service by a young company called Medicinal Genomics, which aims to explore the genomes of therapeutic plants.'"
Re:What about cannabis inidica? (Score:2, Informative)
indica has a much more pronouced sedative effect... 10 minutes after using some strong indica, you are either completely zoned out or passed out. Sativa is a much more energetic intoxication. Strong sativas come from cross breeding with indicas, but still retain the energetic intoxication.
...without messing up my mind
There is a very rapid tolerance with strong cannabis. By the third day of heavy use, you don't even notice it anymore. So the side effect of intoxication is there initially, but if you were using strong stuff daily, you'd have the medicative effects without the intoxicating side effect.
Also, THC kind of sucks by itself. There's a prescription drug called marinol that is synthetic-THC, very strong... everyone I have ever heard that has used it has said its like taking haldol, which, if you didn't know, really really sucks. There is something to the cannibinoids, CBN and others, that interact with THC that we don't understand yet... probably because cannabis is so fucking scary to the post-mccarthiests that its just too dangerous to study. Meanwhile, testing the sewage coming out of the Capital Building and the White House reveals that many someones in there are using cocaine, heroin, and narcotic prescription drugs.
Re:What about cannabis inidica? (Score:5, Informative)
btw, the drugs name you were looking for was marinol and it doesn't have the benefits of cannabis because it lacks cbd's/cbn's. That's precisely why the US government only allowed studies to be done with hemp laced with marinol to show that it wasn't a good medical treatment.
Re:Just to check (Score:5, Informative)
that they have verified that
1.) They are certain that heredity is solely controlled by genes.
2.) They are certain that DNA is the sole mechanism for passing on genes.
3.) That looking at DNA sequences is a productive method of finding causes of things.
Personally I believe that they are uncertain in (1), uncertain in (2) and that (3) is not true. DNA is a waste of time with regards to 99.99999% of human behaviour.
WTF have you been smoking? Even if 1 and 2 are not completely true, there is enough about us programmed into our genes that it's still a useful thing to know. Human behaviour is part nature part nurture, not exclusively one or the other, and I bet the nature part is more than the 0.00001% figure you cite. Understanding the nature part can help us understand the nurture part better, so it's not a waste of time.
Re:Now all we need is... (Score:5, Informative)
People have been doing that for many years with the common hop vine (Humulus lupulus) which is also a member of the Cannabaceae family. Grafting hop vines onto a good Cannabis rootstock yields a scion with strobili that are visually indistinguishable from an ordinary hop flower. Unfortunately, the product is not very potent-- the best outcome is maybe 1.5-2% THC (and only trace amounts of other interesting compounds) which is terrible compared to the 10-20% THC that you can get from a well-managed C. sativa or C. indica flower. Also, the graft process is very finicky, the scion does not grow as well as an ungrafted vine, and your resulting plant is annual (like Cannabis) rather than perennial (like Humulus.) The hops you get are not terribly useful for beer-making, which is pretty much the only use for hops. (Some people like to make a sedative tea from hops, though I doubt that would be a good delivery method for the THC, since it's not water-soluble.) One other major "gotcha" is that the Cannabis plant matures much faster than hops, and the production density is hundreds of times better for Cannabis than Humulus.
Interestingly, there is some published scientific literature (see Crombie) that claims this grafting process does not work. However, I wonder, because Crombie talks about the hops "leaves" even though the only useful part of the plant is the flower (or properly, the "strobile.") The research I mention above has not been published, though the "1.5-2% THC" value I quoted has been measured by GC-MS. And, of course, there are just tons of anecdotal evidence from amateur gardeners that support either opinion.
I'll let someone else do the genetic research, but I think it may eventually be possible to engineer an algae that eats sunlight and poops THC. Wouldn't that be fun!
Re:What about cannabis inidica? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What about cannabis inidica? (Score:5, Informative)
Marijuana is carcinogenic
Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection [washingtonpost.com]
You've been lied to by the government... again. Smoking pot does increase your risk for COPD, but as the linked articl says, pot may actually help prevent cancer.