David Sinclair, Harvard Medical SchoolYeast cells.

We use yeast to make the staples of life: bread, beer, and wine.

Now, researchers from the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany have engineered yeast to generate some notable chemicals in marijuana, including THC, which is mostly responsible for the marijuana's high, and cannabidiol.

And that's just the start. The work could unlock the true potential for medical marijuana — or for actually deriving medicine from the more than 80 cannabinoids (and more than 500 other chemical compounds!) found in the plant.

How this works

Yeast has been engineered to produce the main psychoactive compound in marijuana - tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Responsible for the majority of marijuana's psychological effects - including the high - THC can also be use to treat symptoms of HIV infection and chemotherapy and researchers are hoping their yeast will be able to pump it out more efficiently than producing synthetic versions.

While the purveyors of e-cigarettes talk up the technology as a harmless substitute to traditional smoking, there’s a fast-mounting body of research saying that’s not the whole story. Not only are some e-cigarette substances even more dangerous than tobacco, but there’s increasing evidence that vaping encourages people to take up smoking.

The cannabis industry has come a long way. Four states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana, and voters in up to five more states might do the same next year. Plenty of businesses have launched to successfully sell (and legally, I might add) cannabis and extracts.

Imagine an agribusiness that never had access to a modern commodities market and had never used any real information technology. Suddenly, it had the opportunity to leap into high tech and potentially enjoy whole new economies of scale -- a pure greenfield proposition. What would happen?

With new international and state legalization, as well as a current moratorium on federal enforcement, marijuana is that agribusiness. Untouched by the traditions of an internal IT practice, it's creating a road map for the future, charted almost entirely in the cloud.

Out of the filing cabinet and into the cloud

To be clear, trepidation remains about digitizing the business side of cannabis. Ask Eddie Miller, CEO of eCann, which runs a site called Investincannabis.com:

By Tim Strombel

CB Scientific & uPrep Make History by Giving Access to Patients & Growers to an Advanced Scientific Laboratory from Anywhere Without Boundaries Affordably

We all live in Colorado where cannabis is legal. And as such, we are free to recreate when and where we see fit (within the confines of the law, of course), and to use it as medicine if it helps us. But sometimes, packing a bowl of greens on the go is messy, not responsible to do in public, or inconvenient. Luckily, we’ve come up with more than a few solutions to this issue since the innovation of legal cannabis.

From flavored and CBD-infused pens to devices for easily stashing and packing marijuana, here are some of the awesome cannabis innovations that are making things easier on cannabis users, and enriching lives in the cannabis world.

Times are changing for the cannabis cousins. States are legalizing marijuana, and the U.S. is easing its ban on growing hemp. Will a hemp boom follow?