Heya, newish redditor here. PhD in functional genomics. I'm going to be pretty topical because I have some work I need to finish soon, but this is one of my favorite topics!

I've been keeping up with some related journals (I can post sources later, with request) and have found some interesting results in using yeast as a producer for chemicals. A recent paper was published on yeast where the group re-engineered the metabolism by knocking out several genes in very important, constitutionally expressed food source pathways. The thing is, the GM yeast will permanently exist in optimal media, so it makes sense that the cultures can thrive without genes for foods located only in their natural habitat. Doing this has increased the production of the chemical of interest (I think terpenes?) by almost 10x. I think this will be a good, preliminary organism. I've worked with biofuel and industrial protein synthesis in algae, and they're a pain in the ass. Given that this could have some illegal implications, I think yeast would work additionally well considering it's easy for hobbyists to culture. Incubate a culture in some media with tryptophan, and you have DMT factories (as long as it's not somehow toxic to the organism).

I say if there's any way to get the modified yeast, it would be fairly simple to transform the genes into the organism. The thing is, do we have any sequenced organism that has the genes? You mention no, but I thought multiple organisms produce DMT (completely unsupported)? If so, it's just a matter of some bioinformatic work.

I have some ideas on how to make such a search more affordable, but I don't think there's much funding. Maybe in a few years when the world recognizes the potentials of certain psychedelics, but we'll probably be in some computer augmented reality by then. I can go into much more detail if there's any requests.