Ancient enzymes – the plant remembered

Not archaeology of bones
Archaeology of function.

In 2026, researchers at Wageningen University & Research did something that sounds almost fictional: they reconstructed ancient cannabis enzymes that no longer exist in living plants.

Using ancestral sequence reconstruction, they inferred what cannabinoid-producing enzymes may have looked like millions of years ago, rebuilt them in the laboratory, and tested how they worked.

The result was beautiful.

Modern cannabis uses specialised enzymes to produce compounds such as THC, CBD and CBC. But the ancestral versions were broader, more flexible, and less specialised. One enzyme could produce several cannabinoids before evolution gradually refined the system through gene duplication and functional specialisation.

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.