A company in Massachusetts claims they have unlocked the genetic code of marijuana, paving the way for advanced research on the properties of cannabis and more effective treatments for ailments using cannabis.

The company – known as Medicinal Genomics – posted raw sequence strings at midnight, and say they plan to make all 131 billion bases of sequence available this fall. Their results have yet to be peer reviewed, but they are believed to constitute the largest known gene collection of the Cannabis genomes so far.

Researchers hope these findings will allow them to separate out the psychoactive effects of marijuana for those who just want the medicine and not the high.

Time will tell what these results really mean for medical marijuana patients, but it’s good to see scientific advances in the realm of cannabis. There is not a more versatile, amazing plant on earth and we need to know everything we can possibly know about it.

- Joe Klare