The bacterial communities living inside the fruiting body of the psychedelic mushroom Psilocybe cubensis and in the surrounding soil are essential for the mushroom's health and growth. High-throughput amplicon sequencing of samples from two locations in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India, showed distinct microbial diversity between the mushroom and its soil. Environmental and human factors strongly influenced the microbiomes. The most abundant bacterial genera were Ochrobactrum, Stenotrophomonas, Achromobacter, and Brevundimonas. This work advances understanding of the mushroom's microbial ecology and sets the stage for further research on how bacterial communities affect mushroom growth.
Psilocybin, the main psychoactive compound in psychedelic mushrooms, also shows antimicrobial activity. Mushrooms collected in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, were extracted and analyzed using HPTLC and LC-MS. The extracted psilocybin inhibited bacterial pathogens such as Staphylococcus epidermidis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa at a minimum inhibitory concentration of 12.5 µg/mL, and fungal pathogens including Candida tropicalis and Trichophyton rubrum at 6.25 µg/mL. These results suggest that psilocybin could serve as a basis for developing new antimicrobial drugs, pending further in vivo efficacy and toxicity testing.