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stinging nettle
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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I don't get it. If the sting of U. pelulifera already contains bufotenin, what genetic change would be needed for a psychedelic sting? Wikipedia says bufotenin is a psychedelic substance and a DMT analog.
Fun fact: while searching for this, I've found that apparently some people seem to have elevated levels of bufotenin in their pee. Could be another source...
Gonna need a bigger dose.
I would guess the change would be to produce more bufotenin and less stinging, rather than adding bufotenin out of whole cloth.
Still probably more than one change, but theoretically feasible to manually breed a population of hallucinogenic stinging nettles if you're open to being stung a lot for testing.
Oh, I thought that it was qualitatively already a psychedelic sting. But yeah, quantity is key here xD