Due to its notorious status, marijuana has often been left behind as science moves forward with the study of botany. But much of that has changed with the passage of Amendment 64. “Despite the fact that cannabis is one of the most valuable and historically important crop species, we know comparatively little about the plant,” says Nolan Kane, a member of the University of Colorado Boulder’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology, who is heading up the Cannabis Genome Research Initiative.

With this project, Kane intends to map the marijuana genome, creating a more sophisticated knowledge of its DNA makeup and history — a treatment that other plants like corn and soybeans have enjoyed for a few years.