Thank you Ronny, Eva, Jay, Jacob, Nicole, Billy, Sophie, and Caine for taking care of us and all the hospitality at Entheogenesis. Fun on a bun, and fantastic to meet so many of the people who have sent me spores this year. After my talk, which you can watch here if you attended the conference, I spoke to more than 10 people about their experiences of Wood Lover's Paralysis, which occurs as a side effect when eating Psilocybe subaeruginosa, and temporarily paralyses people during a psilocybin experience. The grey areas around the cause of WLP are: (i) is there variation among humans (are there more susceptible people), (ii) is it caused by metabolism when mushrooms grow on particular substrates, or (iii) is it caused by secondary metabolites produced by genotypes of P. subaeruginosa? It felt like the majority of you have experienced WLP and with varying symptoms (from full paralysis including not being able to speak, to paralysis of limbs). We might be able to rule out that some people are immune, even though one member of our community has never experienced WLP after >30 years of practice. The anecdotal evidence leans toward substrate or genotype. Paralysis occurred in people who had picked from wild areas and cultivated garden beds, and paralysis reoccurred when people ate smaller doses of the same batch of harvested mushrooms (interesting). In a manuscript coming out soon (it's been reviewed, just stuck in a bottleneck), we show an additional copy of one of the genes that produce an enzyme in the metabolic pathway of psilocybin. PsiH genes convert tryptamine into 4- Hydroxytryptamine, but when you have redundant copies of a gene, they can start to innovate. Redundant genes are not under selection (their previous function is wrapped up by the original copy) and they can explore mutations over generations to take on versatile functions. If the new enzymes produced are not deleterious and confer a slight advantage, they'll stick around in the gene pool.
The first hypothesis to explore is that there are functional copies of the psiH3 gene in the population of P. subaeruginosa, and individuals with those copies produce a Wood Lover's Paralysis phenotype. Those data should be coming to me soon (it is Christmas after all) and we can all share in the excitement.
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Designer Shrooms @ Funky Fungus on 1st July 2023
I started a gig at Funky Fungus as Chief Scientific Officer to make designer shrooms Our research on Psilocybe
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