Psychedelic mushrooms have been used by humans for a long time, possibly forthousands of years.
The main ingredient in these mushrooms that affects our brain is called psilocybin.
Though there are many psilocybin-containing mushrooms, Psilocybe cubensis is the most common commercially grown species nowadays.
Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms.Image: YARphotographer (Shutterstock)
Psilocybin is of course taken recreationally, if illegally in many places, for its euphoric and dissociative effects.
But in recent years, its started to receive a lot more attention for its potential health applications.
They then sequenced and compared the genetics of these varieties.
One of Funky Fungus’s new designer mushrooms, a cross-breed of an Australian variety and an existing cultivar.Image: Alistair McTaggart
Their results werepublishedMonday in the journal Current Biology.
Their greater diversity today suggests that these naturalized mushrooms recovered from the lack of variation seen in commercialized cultivars.
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