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Yeast Produce Low-Cost, High-Quality Cannabinoids

posted by chromas on Thursday February 28 2019, @11:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the smoke-yeast-every-day dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

University of California, Berkeley, synthetic biologists have engineered brewer's yeast to produce marijuana's main ingredients -- mind-altering THC and non-psychoactive CBD -- as well as novel cannabinoids not found in the plant itself.

Feeding only on sugar, the yeast are an easy and cheap way to produce pure cannabinoids that today are costly to extract from the buds of the marijuana plant, Cannabis sativa.

"For the consumer, the benefits are high-quality, low-cost CBD and THC: you get exactly what you want from yeast," said Jay Keasling, a UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of bioengineering and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "It is a safer, more environmentally friendly way to produce cannabinoids."

Cannabis and its extracts, including the high-inducing THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, are now legal in 10 states and the District of Columbia, and recreational marijuana -- smoked, vaped or consumed as edibles -- is a multibillion-dollar business nationwide. Medications containing THC have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to reduce nausea after chemotherapy and to improve appetite in AIDS patients.

CBD, or cannabidiol, is used increasingly in cosmetics -- so-called cosmeceuticals -- and has been approved as a treatment for childhood epileptic seizures. It is being investigated as a therapy for numerous conditions, including anxiety, Parkinson's disease and chronic pain.

[...] Cannabinoids join many other chemicals and drugs now being produced in yeast, including human growth hormone, insulin, blood clotting factors and recently, but not yet on the market, morphine and other opiates.

Complete biosynthesis of cannabinoids and their unnatural analogues in yeast (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-0978-9)

-- submitted from IRC

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Friday March 01 2019, @02:13AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday March 01 2019, @02:13AM (#808520) Journal

    https://www.outsideonline.com/2390779/cannabis-beer [outsideonline.com]

    “Alcohol is being consumed less and less by young people, and they’re looking for an alternative that tastes great, has fewer calories, and doesn’t give you a hangover,” says Keith Villa, who has a Ph.D. in brewing from the University of Brussels and is the cofounder of Ceria Brewing Co., which is producing a new cannabis-infused, nonalcoholic beer called Grainwave Belgian-Style White Ale. Villa was the brewer behind MillerCoors’s Blue Moon Belgian Wheat, the iconic macrobeer that was many drinkers’ first introduction to the craft style. Villa left MillerCoors in early 2018 and started his cannabis beer company in Arvada, Colorado, shortly afterward. “With this generation of young adults, no one wants to lose control and end up seeing their image on Facebook or Instagram,” says Villa, citing his two twentysomething daughters and their disinterest in alcohol as part of the impetus for Ceria.

    [...] The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, a federal agency known as the TTB, legally prohibits making beer that includes both alcohol and THC. But nonalcoholic beer isn’t regulated by the TTB. In Colorado, it’s regulated by the MED, the state’s marijuana enforcement division. Currently, Ceria is available at 50 Colorado dispensaries and a ten-ounce bottle retails for $9. Villa hopes it will soon be available in other states where recreational marijuana is legal.

    I was under the impression that there were some beers with alcohol and cannabis in them, but I guess not.

    (Not counting the up to 0.5% ABV that these beers tend to have.)

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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday March 01 2019, @08:18PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday March 01 2019, @08:18PM (#808910) Journal

    There are CBD beers. [westword.com] But no THC ones that I'm aware of.