Here’s what happens when DNA sequencing meets college parties: Cannabis sativa genome was mapped, and the results were published in Amazon’s EC2 public cloud computing service by a young company called Medicinal Genomics, which aims to explore the genomes of therapeutic plants.

However, the company has only posted the raw bits and pieces, so you basically only get 131 billion parts which haven’t been put to the long process of assembly. Also, in case you’re wondering, the cannabis plants were grown, loved, and prepped for sequencing in a laboratory in Amsterdam.

This will undoubtedly contribute to the growth of the medical marijuana branch, which is already growing at an impressive 50% per year.

“It’s going to have to be a fairly regulated market,” he says, “and regulation is going to come through genetics and fingerprinting of which strains are approved.”, says Medicinal Genomics founder Kevin McKernan who is interested not only in THC, but also in other cannabinoids.

Via Nature

Enjoyed this article? Join 40,000+ subscribers to the ZME Science newsletter. Subscribe now!