The Penis Envy mushroom genome: what the name and the records show

Search for the Penis Envy mushroom genome and you find a short chain of public records: a 2021 data note, a handful of NCBI entries and a genome-browser page. They are real and traceable. They also show something the nickname hides: the label was attached to one sample by the people who submitted it, in text that the paper itself calls anecdotal.

This guide reads those records line by line. It is about the name and the paper trail, not the legend. For the McKenna and Pollock story and the 2026 lab comparison, read Penis Envy mushroom history and watch our film Penis Envy: The Mushroom Behind the Myth. Here we make no claim about who first grew the mushroom, where it came from or what it descends from. Those questions are unresolved.

We label findings as we go. Established means the record shows it directly. Preliminary means one study or one account. Unresolved means the records do not say.

Is Penis Envy a species or a strain?

Neither, in any formal sense. GBIF accepts Psilocybe cubensis as the species and lists Penis Envy only among its English common names, a list it takes from the Catalogue of Life (GBIF). “Strain” is a convenient word in conversation, but it does not give a name a taxonomic rank. The 2021 data note itself says “The strain name is anecdotal” (McKernan et al., 2021). Evidence: established that it is an informal name for P. cubensis.

For how species, variety, strain and cultivar are used (and misused) in this field, see magic mushroom names explained and Psilocybe cubensis taxonomy.

Which genome record is labelled Penis Envy?

One assembly, described in a 2021 data note by Kevin McKernan and colleagues at Medicinal Genomics, a sequencing company. The authors report a 46.6 Mb genome in 32 contigs with an N50 of 3.3 Mb, 97.6% BUSCO completeness, and the psilocybin gene cluster on a single 3.2 Mb contig (McKernan et al., 2021). The data note reports no chemical measurements of the sample. The table shows where the label does, and does not, appear.

The label therefore travels with the sample as text supplied by the submitters. In NCBI’s formal strain field the sample is MGC-MH-2018, a lab code. The nickname reaches the assembly name only in a February 2022 revision (NCBI assembly record; revision history). Of the 42 P. cubensis assembly records NCBI Datasets returned on 4 October 2026 (the GenBank and RefSeq copies of one assembly count separately), only that pair carries “Penvy” in its name. The others are listed under codes such as BRIP75061 or CM-UDEA-H106 (NCBI Datasets). Evidence: established.

How should the accession numbers be read?

An accession number identifies a submission to a public database. It does not certify the name of the material behind it. Four points keep the numbers straight:

• PRJNA700437 is a Medicinal Genomics project umbrella. Besides the P. cubensis assembly it lists assemblies of other Psilocybe species, so it names a project, not a variety (NCBI BioProject).
• PRJNA687911 holds Illumina reads from other samples. The data note’s abstract lists both project numbers, but its text uses the reads as a comparison from “a different P. cubensis (strain name unknown)”, so a reader of the abstract alone could assume both belong to the Penis Envy sample (NCBI BioProject).
• The data note cites the first WGS version, JAFIQS000000000.1 (McKernan et al., 2021). NCBI’s current record is the revised assembly, with 42 contigs in 20 scaffolds and a contig N50 of 2.8 Mb, so today’s statistics do not match the paper’s (NCBI assembly record). The records do not explain the revision.
• The species identity was checked by alignment: the authors aligned the assembly to three other public P. cubensis datasets and one P. cyanescens dataset to verify taxonomic identification, and 96 to 98.75% of the P. cubensis sequences aligned (McKernan et al., 2021). That supports the species, not the name.

A second accession shows the same limit. A 2025 study of 42 strains lists a sample called “Psilocybe cubensis PE”, whose ITS barcode matched P. cubensis at 99.73% identity (Cohen et al., 2025). Its GenBank record, PV069806, is a 277-base ITS fragment labelled isolate “PE”, from a fruiting body collected in Israel in January 2024 (NCBI record). A short barcode like that supports the species. It cannot show lineage.

What do the dated records show about the name?

• 22 March 2021: NCBI registers BioProject PRJNA700437, titled with the lab code MGC-MH-2018 (NCBI BioProject).
• 24 March 2021: the first public assembly version is released under the name MGC_Pcub_v3 (NCBI revision history).
• 9 April 2021: data note version 1 is published. A reviewer’s report of 26 April 2021 on that version refers to “the P. envy strain” (F1000Research).
• 15 June 2021: version 2, the latest version we found, is published (F1000Research). Crossref and the journal’s version list show no version 3.
• 4 February 2022: the NCBI assembly is renamed MGC_Penvy_1 (NCBI revision history).

These records establish documented research use of the label by April 2021. They do not establish the name’s first use or its history. For earlier informal uses, see Penis Envy mushroom history. The data note’s open peer review is public (reviewer report, 21 May 2021). Its authors disclose that Medicinal Genomics offers sequencing services in the cannabis space and may offer similar services for P. cubensis if demand grows, which is context, not a criticism.

What do “P.envy”, “PE” and “APE” mean in these records?

Each is a label as written by whoever supplied the sample. The data note says “P.envy”, CoGe’s version field says “Penis Envy”, and the 2025 study says “PE”. In the Fall 2022 Hyphae Cup results PDF, a sample named “APE RL” has “Albino Penis Envy” in the cultivar column. The same PDF has eight entries from eight different submitters whose cultivar column includes “Penis Envy” in some form, among them “Old Dirty Penis Envy” and “Shepperd’s Penis Envy” (Hyphae Cup).

That documents how entrants described their samples in that report. It does not show that APE and Penis Envy are interchangeable, that the entries share a parent, or that any cross is what its label says. We do not give abbreviations separate pages for that reason: a new page would need its own traceable records.

Does the genome show where Penis Envy came from?

No. The open peer review of version 1 includes a request that the authors add background on the alleged origin of the Penis Envy “mutation”. The reviewers retold a story about it and called it “anecdotal at best” (reviewer report, 21 May 2021). A reviewer’s discussion of a story does not make it a result, and the revised data note we read contains no origin account. This article assigns no discoverer, expedition, place of origin or ancestry to the name. Evidence: unresolved.

To publish a fuller origin account, you would need a traceable sequence of dated records linking material, people and the label. Retellings can document how a story spread, but repeating a story is not independent confirmation. Our guide to researching magic mushroom origin stories sets out that method.

Can one genome tell you what other “Penis Envy” samples are?

Not by name alone. A genome assembly represents sequence data from one studied sample. It is valuable for later comparison, but it is not a family tree of every similarly labelled sample. That broader claim needs appropriately sampled comparisons and provenance records.

The same group’s 2021 atlas of 81 Psilocybe genomes used this assembly as its “P.envy” reference. It also shows how shaky names are. Reviewers Dentinger and Bradshaw did not approve the paper, writing that its interpretation depends on identifications from the retail vendors that supplied the spores, with no voucher material (reviewer report, 19 October 2021). The paper’s text says samples sharing a strain name from different spore banks “cluster together as expected”, while the authors’ reply to reviewers says one named strain showed lower genotype agreement between vendors, and calls the field’s nomenclature “very nascent and unvalidated” (McKernan et al., 2021, atlas). Evidence: preliminary, from one team’s data.

Population genetics adds context. A 2023 study compared 86 commercial cultivar genomes with 38 Australian isolates and reported hallmarks of selfing and clonal propagation in cultivars, most founded from related populations (McTaggart et al., 2023, abstract). A 2025 review adds that its strain descriptions come mostly from “non-academic, community-based reports” (Kurzbaum et al., 2025). See what can be compared across cubensis names for how to compare such records.

Does a genome record say anything about strength or effects?

No. The data note reports sequence and assembly statistics, and no chemical measurements. A structural difference it describes, an extra stretch of about 4.6 kb extending the end of a gene for an N-methyltransferase enzyme, compared with Illumina reads from a different P. cubensis, comes with the authors’ comment that further work is needed to understand its biological significance. Nothing in the records gives a universal multiplier or characteristic experience for the name. The question for any laboratory result is what material was tested and how representative it was. Our potency evidence guide explains why a named result should not become a fixed property of a label.

What would make a labelled genome record more useful?

• A voucher specimen or culture lodged in a collection, so others can re-examine the material.
• The source and date the sample was acquired, and who supplied the label.
• The accession numbers for the sequence tied to that specimen in one place.
• An identification method, and a rights statement for any photograph.

Appearance is not a substitute. A photograph can show what one documented sample looked like, but visual resemblance cannot establish lineage. We keep this article free of any shape checklist for that reason.

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