New frontiers in the biosynthesis of psychoactive specialized metabolites
Current Opinion in Plant Biology September 16, 2024 Ginny Li, Peter J. Facchini 6 citations
The relaxation of psychedelic drug regulations has spurred clinical research into treating mental health conditions with natural compounds like psilocybin and synthetic analogs like LSD. Understanding the biosynthetic pathways of hallucinogenic metabolites—ibogaine, mescaline, psilocybin, lysergic acid, and DMT—from plants, fungi, and animals offers opportunities for synthetic biology to create novel derivatives with improved pharmacological properties. This review covers these metabolic pathways and their reconstitution in microorganisms, highlighting the integration of native and non-native enzymes to produce new compounds.