Marijuana stocks jump on bio-engineering deal

Marijuana-related stocks spiked Tuesday on news that Ginko Bioworks, a Boston-based bioengineering company, had signed a $122 million deal to engineer active compounds from cannabis for the Cronos Group, a Canadian medical marijuana producer.

Ginko, which bills itself as "the organism company," got its start producing rose oil from brewer's yeast for perfume. It also serves the pharmaceutical and flavoring industries. Under it's partnership with Cronos, Ginko will extract DNA from marijuana plants to create rare cannabinoids in large quantities in the lab. One of the cannabinoids Ginko will produce, a compound called tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV), is thought to function as an appetite suppressant, according to Bloomberg, which could not resist going for the pun and described interest in marijuana stocks "at an all-time high."

"The potential uses of cannabinoids are vast, but the key to successfully bringing cannabinoid-based products to market is in creating reliable, consistent, and scalable production of a full spectrum of cannabinoids, not just THC and CBD," said Cronos CEO Mike Gorenstein in a statement.

Cronos (CRON) closed up 12.75 percent at $11.14 and has gained nearly 500 percent in the past year. Tilray (TLRY) closed up nearly 18 percent with Canopy Growth (CGC) up 14.6 percent.