A Cannabis High, No Plant Required
In research announced on Wednesday by the University of California at Berkeley, a team of synthetic biologists modified brewer’s yeast to produce a range of cannabinoids, which are compounds in cannabis that affect the brain and body. To brew cannabinoids—the most famous of which are tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol, or THC and CBD—the operation looks much like a traditional brewery, says Jay Keasling, the Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering who led the research. “Essentially what we’ve done is taken yeast, which would normally produce ethanol for beer or wine, and we put in it the gene for producing cannabinoids,” he says.
Source: www.theatlantic.com