Mechanism of toxin synthesis using cultured poisonous mushroom

Research Project

Project/Area Number	10670380
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Legal medicine
Research Institution	Akita University
Principal Investigator	GONMORI Kunio Akita University School of Medicine Research Assoc., 医学部, 助手 (10006744)
Project Period (FY)	1998 – 2000
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2000)
Budget Amount *help	¥3,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,600,000) Fiscal Year 2000: ¥400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000) Fiscal Year 1999: ¥400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000) Fiscal Year 1998: ¥2,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,800,000)
Keywords	Mushroom poisoning / Cultivation / Magic mushroom / Growth factor / Analysis / HPLC / 毒きのこ / 幻覚きのこ / 毒成分
Research Abstract	Several kind of mushrooms has strong toxicity to kill people. However, there have been only few reports of toxicological analysis on poisonous mushroom in forensic field. This study aimed to cultivate some poisonous mushrooms for the purpose of investigation and research in forensic toxicology. In our experiment the following mushrooms were cultivated, Pleurotus ostreatus, Lentinus edodes, Psilocybe cubensis, Amanita virosa, Lampteromyces japonicus and Gymnopilus spectabilis. Eventually the cultivation of Lyophyllum and Psilocybe cubensis resulted well-grown mushrooms. In the case of the Psilocybe cubensis, psilocybin and psilocin are the main hallucinogenic components. We observed the effect of storage on the concentration of these two hallucinogens. From harvesting the Psilocybe cubensis the freezing method provided the most valuable results to store mushrooms. A sample from a poisonous case suggested magic mushroom ingestion was analyzed. The mushroom was described as Psilocybe subcubensis. Recently the interest of the magic mushroom poisoning appears to be growing around the world. This research attempts to promote the investigation protocol for magic mushroom's cases.