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. 2023 Mar 28;24:95. doi: 10.1186/s12931-023-02399-1

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© The Author(s) 2023

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

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Fig. 2 — Biosynthesis of cannabinoids and structural differences between Δ⁹-THC and CBD. Conversion of olivetolic acid to cannabigerolic acid (CBGA) occurs through the use of aromatic prenyltransferase. CBGA acts as the point of differentiation from which cannabinoid-specific FAD-oxidases (THCA synthase & CBDA synthase) convert CBGA to precursor cannabinoid acids. Subsequent decarboxylation of cannabinoid acids results in active cannabinoids. Δ⁹-THC forms a cyclic ring whereas CBD has a hydroxy group resulting three-dimensional structural differences