Preserving “funky” fungus: 5 Questions for mycologist Alistair McTaggart

McTaggart discusses why genetic diversity matters, and what the future might look like for psychedelic mushrooms in Australia.

A mycologist by training, Alistair McTaggart cares less about psychedelic mushrooms’ effects on humans than he does about the mushrooms themselves. For over a decade, the University of Queensland professor had studied fungi that cause plant diseases. Then, in 2020, he decided he wanted a change and he fired off an application to work with controlled substances, hallucinogenic mushrooms specifically, and within three months, the Australian government had granted him permission. 

McTaggart began mapping the genomes of the Psilocybe genus. Soon, his research caught the eye of an entrepreneur launching a company called Funky Fungus to preserve genomes, and he began working with the company to use his research to create new mushroom varieties. Over the last few months, the company folded, but McTaggart is determined to continue his academic inquiry into the genetic variations in mushrooms. The Microdose spoke with him about why genetic diversity matters, and what the future might look like for psychedelic mushrooms in Australia. 

What shaped the genetic evolution of magic mushrooms? 

We know that psilocybin evolved in a most recent common ancestor in Psilocybe. So Psilocybe and therefore psilocybin, has probably been around between 20 to 100 million years. That’s a really really long time. 

Over time, Psilocybe has diversified; we know that there's at least 200 species. Each of those species grew in its own little environmental niches, and it was evolving or co-evolving with whatever was chowing down on it, probably things like mollusks, insects, nematodes, anything that has a serotonin receptor, essentially. So some species were perhaps preyed on more heavily by slugs, some more by insects or nematodes, and that diversity has led these different species to produce psilocybin in different ways. 

Is there any evidence that this diversity could lead to different subjective effects in humans? 

If you look at different Psilocybe strains, you see that there is allelic diversity, meaning that the genes in charge of producing psilocybin are quite different. When you look at the magic mushrooms that grow in the natural environment in Australia, every population, if not every individual, has different alleles. 

Think about those different targets I described Psilocybe having over time. For whatever reason, it's producing psilocybin, whether it's to repel, attract, or control other living things. If you agree that there's probably different targets in Psilocybe’s natural environment, then that’s the first step you can take into thinking that maybe natural diversity in a single taxon, like Psilocybe cubensis, gives it a different effect. Maybe it's that there's elevated levels of different tryptamines because of a transcription factor that increases one compound or another. If only there was a person who had access to every single allele and was able to legally grow mushrooms and eat them!

In the world of magic mushroom aficionados, there is a saying that goes “a cube is a cube” — meaning different varieties of Psilocybe cubensis provide the same kind of trip. It seems that is not your philosophy. Why does genetic diversity matter? 

If you had only ever eaten the Cavendish banana for your whole life, and then someone gave you a ladyfinger or a plantain, you would be like a caveman being introduced to fire! Like, “What is this? I thought the Cavendish was the only banana! What's going on here, in terms of flavor and texture?” 

I don't want to say anyone is right or wrong, but I want to plant the seed that we know allelic diversity translates to impact, and that genetic diversity translates to a phenotype and possibly a mode of action against different predators. What's it going to do to humans? Anecdotally, there is some evidence these strains can cause different effects, and I’m worried that if there isn’t a way to preserve them, we won’t know more, and people won’t get to experience them.

That was one of the missions of the company you worked with, Funky Fungus: to make these “funky” strains, and make them accessible to researchers and for drug development. What was the vision for the organization, and where do things stand now? 

Funky Fungus originally started out with the idea that we’d supply a medicinal market.  When the Therapeutic Goods Administration announced in Australia that they would allow psilocybin prescriptions, I was put on this project. The company’s owner, Chris Applewood, needed someone with this knowledge. We went to a conference together and it was there that it kind of clicked for Chris — he realized the community was in disagreement about how it should move forward, with even just baseline things like having trouble creating a control for these drugs in studies. And with the estimates of psychedelic-assisted treatment being between $15,000 to $25,000 AUD (Editor’s note: that’s $10,000 to $16,700 USD), which wouldn't have been covered by any government medical support, it was clear this will be accessible only to a small population. So Chris started to realize the clinical route really is not the way that we want to be going in the short term. 

We were always aiming to give psilocybin to people for a dollar a dose. We had the shared mentality that this would be for the people. So we started talking about gray markets, any way we could start to give people what we've been making, but then you're probably treading on a very, very fine line within the frame of the law. 

Australian regulators just released a draft of their psilocybin regulations, which allows only synthetic psilocybin or Psilocybe cubensis to be prescribed by psychiatrists for treatment-resistant depression. Given that there are so many varieties within P. cubensis, do the rules leave the door open for “funky” fungus to be prescribed in Australia?

I'm an optimist, but I don't know. Maybe there will be that opportunity in the future, but perhaps I’ll have a long gray beard by then. I mean, growing Psilocybe cubensis? That works, in the short term, but again, it’s that banana thing. Over the last 50 years, people have been cultivating Psilocybe, and they are pioneers that laid the groundwork for mushroom growers. But at the same time, they’ve decreased the genetic diversity — they’ve made the Cavendish banana. But gosh, what is still out there waiting to be innovated? We should be celebrating diversity. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.