Mystery of why magic mushrooms turn blue solved

Mystery of why magic mushrooms turn blue solved Why do magic mushrooms turn blue when cut? Chemists have now unraveled this decade-long mystery, in the process revealing that the dark blue pigments at the center of the mystery are similar to indigo, the dye used to produce blue jeans. Magic mushrooms or Psilocybe are mushrooms that produce the psychotropic compounds psilocybin and psilocin. they're one among several species that instantly develop a blue coloration when cut or bruised. In Boletal mushrooms, oxidized pyocyanin or pulvinic acid is the source of the blue color. But that is not the case with Psilocybe mushrooms. Previous research had established that the blue color was caused by oxidized psilocybin, but the character of the pigment and therefore the biochemical pathway that produced it remained elusive. Dirk Hoffmeister from the Leibniz Institute for Natural Products Research and Infection Biology, Germany, and his team had been working with Psilocybe cubensis for several years. By cultivating the mushrooms in his lab, they had seen the mysterious blue reaction countless times. We were just curious and tried to unravel a phenomenon that has been known for many years, says Hoffmeister. But once they tried to extract and purify the blue compound, they failed. It puzzled and challenged us, says Hoffmeister. This is where previous researchers, very talented people, had to offer up, and this is often where we went one step further with unconventional analytical methods. The researchers delved into the analytical toolbox with liquid chromatography: mass spectrometry, MALDI mass spectrometry, infrared spectroscopy, as well as time-resolved nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to observe compounds as they form. It turns out that pigment is not just a single compound, but a complex mixture of linked psilocybin oxidation products. Most of them are psilocybin quinoid oligomers, compounds similar to indigo, a deep blue pigment used to dye jeans. Share structural similarities in the indole nucleus, and in both the base of the color is a quinoid," says the study's lead author, Claudius Lenz. The six fungal pigments discovered by the researchers are the result of a cascade reaction that starts with psilocybin. A phosphatase enzyme removes its phosphate group and converts it to psilocin. Then an oxidizing laccase creates psilocyl radicals, which combine to form C-5 coupled subunits then further polymerize through C-7. I feel they did a gorgeous job of showing the cascade reaction, says Jaclyn Winter, who studies natural product biosynthesis in bacteria and fungi at the University of Utah, USA.