FEBRUARy 2018 BCBusiness 27
Hi
g
h
b
right grow lights beam upon
shelves illed with lush mari-
juana plants, bursting with buds
and ready for harvest. Jonathan
Page points out a specimen that
to my eye looks identical to the
neighbouring ora. But this leafy
and fragrant individual, a heri-
tage plant that is a queen among
commoners, holds a special place in the
UBC
botanist's heart.
"That's the purple kush, the great-
great-granddaughter of the plant that we
sequenced," the Anandia Laboratories Inc.
co-founder says as a technician in a crisp
white lab coat scurries past carrying a tray of
vials „lled with cannabis tissue extract.
Purple kush is one of roughly 800 known
strains of cannabis. Back in 2009, when pro-
curing ganja for research required creative
interpretation of the law, Page co-led a year-
long eŠort that saw him become the „rst sci-
entist to sequence the cannabis genome—a
road map that contains some 30,000 genes.
Genomics—the science of charting an
organism's genetic makeup—may induce
most pot enthusiasts to yawn and reach for the
vaporizer, but for a research scientist like Page,
sequencing the marijuana plant was molecu-
lar biolo'y's answer to writing Beethoven's
Fifth. It was also a calling card that made his
name in North American academic circles and
beyond as the go-to guy for understanding the
inner workings of cannabis.
JO N AT H A N PAG e'S
A N A N D I A L A B S
c o u l d be t h e m o s t
i m p o r tA n t c A n n A bi s
c o m pA n Y i n
n o r t h A m er i c A . A S
A S L eG A L I z AT I O N
A P P rOAC H eS, t h e
s c ien t i s t-t u r n ed -
en t r ep r en eu r p l A n s
to u s e h i s g r o w i n g
bu s i n es s to u n lo c k
t h e p l A n t ' s s ec r e t s –
A n d B r eeD B e T T er
m A r I JuA N A F O r PA I N
A N D P L e A Su r e
by Andrew Findlay
photography by Pooya Nabei
standards
