Yeast is what turns sugar into alcohol in the beer and wine making process. Now it can also produce cannabinoids – both tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the psychoactive one) and cannabidiol (CBD). A team of researchers at UC Berkeley figured out that by injecting cannabis sativa plant genes into common brewer’s yeast, the stuff would yield both those products normally derived from the cannabis plant. In other words, the scientists created a way to manufacture THC and CBD from specially bioengineered yeast.
This breakthrough could lead to a process of making beer that gets you high, and as a bonus, a much more environmentally friendly alternative to cannabis. Cultivating yeast is a lot more simple and energy-efficient, as well as less time, space, and water consuming than planting, growing, and harvesting cannabinoids from large numbers of cannabis plants. There was a study that showed how 3% of California’s total electricity usage was used to grow cannabis alone, and this was back in 2012!
Jay Keasling, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said:
“For the consumer, the benefits are high-quality, low-cost CBD and THC: you get exactly what you want from yeast. It is a safer, more environmentally friendly way to produce cannabinoids.”
In addition, extracting certain cannabinoids from the flower is a hassle. The procedure of working with the original plant is messy and complicated, which is actually the main reason why researchers and cannabis companies are interested in alternative ways of producing cannabinoids. For example, if you’re only after CBD, there’s a chance your extract could be contaminated with THC. This is an issue if you want to isolate CBD for use as a medicine. The FDA might want to have a word with you if you accidentally dose patients with a psychoactive substance!
Imagine how much simpler it would be to just have a vat of yeast churning out pure, non-psychoactive CBD? “Being able to produce that in a way that’s uncontaminated with THC is a pretty valuable thing,” says Keasling. With this cannabinoid-producing yeast, the outcome is exact because it is controlled.
Yet another key benefit is scale. You could crank out vast amounts of CBD in vats far more easily than by planting greenhouse after greenhouse of cannabis plants. They could make the process ultra-efficient by working with the highest possible concentrations of cannabinoids. The ideal situation would be to optimize the yeast to churn out a whole lot of product.
How It Brews:
- Enzymes inside the yeast first produce CBDA and THCA. Those are the precursors to CBD and THC, respectively.
- To convert the substances (CBDA into CBD and THCA into THC) they have to simply heat them up. Same goes with the plant itself. By eating raw cannabis, it’s unlikely you’d get very high because it’s mostly THCA. It’s only after you apply heat that THCA transforms into THC that it works.
Flexibility In Formulation
Without having to wade through hundreds of other compounds you’d find in pure flower, the scientists can selectively churn out these cannabinoids in the lab, and while doing so, can easily play with them in isolation and with each other. In the end, cannabinoids made from yeast are the same cannabinoids the plant makes. Raber says:
“Ultimately, a molecule is a molecule. It gives flexibility in formulation, it gives broader utility perhaps, and it may eventually scale faster than plants. Regulators might feel a lot better about these types of approaches than those that are fields and fields and fields of plant material.”
Essentially, what Raber and other researchers are pursuing is the ability to reconstruct cannabis’ chemical profile. The goal is to eventually be able to tailor cannabis products, such as tinctures, to a consumer’s preferences. This would allow for a customized ratio of CBD to THC, and the method can theoretically be used to create other cannabinoids such as CBN and CBG, thus leading to countless possibilities.
