I think "where it pulls from" is a very complex question. I have seen studies that suggest se
terpenes may be a precursor to olivolic acid, which starts the chain.
You're never going to believe this, but i did some digging. This rabbit hole brought to you by haze + widow.
So i was reading this paper about thcas, the enzyme that accelerates the reaction from cbga to thca.
Δ[1] -Tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA) synthase is a novel oxidoreductase that catalyzes the biosynthesis of the psychoactive compound THCA in Cannabis sativa (Mexican strain). In order to investigate the structure–function relationship ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
View attachment 1109839View attachment 1109840
And then i thought about this other paper i had read a while ago about the preliminary findings from dna studies on cannabis. Specifically, the most interesting finding for me was they found the gene for thcas. It differed between the two strains they were analyzing, a cbd strain and a thc strain. However, the two genes were exactly the same in each of the two thc drug strains they had.
Exactly.
And just one?
Seemed kind of weird... But anyway, in thinking about this problem, it struck me that uvr8 works by the tryptophan becoming excited by the 320nm light and on and on until it interacts with the messenger rna for a gene that is not the one I was just talking about.
And if it was, we would see a rapid decline in cbga I would think because it would be pulling from that.
But we don't. Which makes sense because that would be kind of an idiosyncratic relationship for such a generalized function in plants.
So it seems more likely that it contributes to the increased thc production primarily by increasing the amount of cbga at that end of the chain. And that requires more of the precursors, which up the chain possibly include some
terpenes (I'm sorry i don't have the steam to chase down these sources right now they might partially be in milsonmilson.me but i may not have put them up there yet). The interaction with thcas idk of course.....but anecdotally i think many people suggest a smell difference.
This also strikes me with the whole "leave your plants in darkness for 24 hours before cut" thing having so much anecdotal evidence....the idea of the plant preparing for something that doesn't come (but only to the extent it can given senescence) via some mechanism like this.
I'm not saying it works like this. Just that hypothetically if it did, this stuff would fit.