Why Did Psychedelic Mushrooms Emerge 67 Million Years Ago?

According to recent study, magic mushrooms have been there since before dinosaurs went extinct. However, it is still unclear why exactly fungi evolved the capacity to manufacture hallucinogenic substances. The study's authors traced the evolution of the genes that produce the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin and discovered that the enzymes needed to produce the molecule were first evolved by the mushroom species Psilocybe approximately 70 million years ago.

There are about 165 species of Psilocybe mushrooms known to exist in the globe, most of which are psychoactive. But even with their growing appeal as recreational and, more recently, medicinal medicines, it wasn't until 2017 that the genes responsible for psilocybin's production were discovered.

It comes out that the substance is produced by four enzymes whose genes are arranged in a group called a biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) and which change the amino acid tryptophan into psilocybin. However, up until recently, scientists had only discovered this BGC in five distinct Psilocybe species, which made it challenging to track the genes' evolutionary history.

In order to address this, the researchers compared the genomes of 71 distinct Psilocybe mushrooms and examined the distribution of 2,983 genes to produce a phylogeny, which is a kind of genetic family tree. The resulting tree shows where distinct genes first occurred in the evolutionary history of mushrooms, and it suggests that the psilocybin BGC first appeared approximately 67 million years ago.

The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event marked the abrupt end of the dinosaur era, meaning that magic mushrooms existed for the final million years or so of that period. Psilocybin initially surfaced in wood-rotting fungal species, but it was subsequently spread to mushrooms that grow in soil and animal faces, according to the researchers' analysis.

This research makes it quite evident that magic mushrooms originated long before even our earliest ancestors showed up, despite the powerful effects of psilocybin on human cognition. Given how implausible it is that psilocybin's ecological role has anything to do with humans, why did the substance evolve in the first place?

The authors of the study note that psilocybin was presumably never meant for large animals, given the rarity with which non-human animals have been documented consuming mushrooms. Sadly, there is little chance that T. Rex and his pals will spend their final moments in a hallucinogenic daze.

Conversely, the researchers note that "fungal-insect interactions are ancient and widespread and provide a more logical hypothesis for development of psilocybin as a chemical defense in mushrooms." "Empirical research is still lacking, but this has been the most widely accepted hypothesis for the ecological role of psilocybin to date."

This notion is conceivable, however it is slightly contradicted by the fact that insects frequently eat Psilocybe mushrooms or lay their eggs in them. This would imply that either psilocybin has caused the bugs to become somewhat immune to it, or that the substance was never intended to repel insects in the first place.

In the end, the researchers are unable to determine why mushrooms started to exhibit hallucinogenic effects; yet, these results indicate that the trip has been ongoing for a while.

The term "psychedelic" was first used in a 1956 letter by psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond to well-known novelist Aldous Huxley. It is derived from the Ancient Greek terms "psyche" (meaning "mind") and "delos" (meaning "to manifest"). In his essay discussing the benefits and drawbacks of mescaline and LSD, Osmond devised the rhyme, "to fathom hell or soar angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic."

He was saying that some drugs have the power to reveal and awaken unconscious levels of awareness, leading to experiences that can be anything from ghastly to transcendent. Finally, after more than 50 years, researchers are examining psychedelics to try and figure out how they cause these bizarre phrenic odysseys.

Even with their poetic qualities, consequences like rising heavenly or comprehending hell are hard to quantify scientifically. For this reason, scientists have created the Five-Dimensional Altered States of Consciousness (5D-ASC) Rating Scale as a tool to aid in the classification of psychedelic experiences. The scale gauges things like "oceanic boundlessness," which is the sensation of losing one's identity in one's environment, and "ego-dissolution," which is a more general loss of identity.