Ancient enzymes – the plant remembered

Not archaeology of bones.
Archaeology of function.

Researchers at Wageningen University & Research did something that sounds almost fictional: they reconstructed inferred ancestral versions of cannabis enzymes that are no longer directly preserved in living plants.

Using ancestral sequence reconstruction and heterologous expression, they inferred the sequences of three ancestral cannabinoid-producing enzymes, rebuilt them in the laboratory and tested how they functioned.

The result was beautiful.

Modern cannabis uses specialised enzymes to convert CBGA into acidic cannabinoids such as THCA, CBDA and CBCA. But the reconstructed ancestral versions were broader, more flexible and less specialised: early enzymes could produce all three compounds before gene duplication and diversification gradually refined the system.

Over time, that process produced the highly specialised THCA and CBDA synthases found in living cannabis plants.

For LIBERA HERBA, this is a different kind of plant memory.

Not memory preserved in a tomb.
Not memory pressed into clay.

Not memory written on paper.
Memory in chemistry.

The plant’s past was not only cultural or archaeological. It was molecular. Hidden in DNA, folded into enzymes, waiting for science to ask the right question.

The plant remembered its chemistry.