Antimalarial tobacco
Genetically modified tobacco will give people a cure for malaria
Tobacco can be called the plant responsible for the death of the largest number of people. However, as a result of the work of genetic engineers, tobacco in the near future may become a source of medicine for one of the most deadly diseases – malaria.
Scientists have created tobacco plants that produce artemisic acid, a chemical precursor of artemisinin, the most effective antimalarial drug to date. The natural source of artemisinin is annual wormwood (Artemisia annua). But the content of artemisinin in the plant is not large enough, so scientists have long been looking for ways to more effectively synthesize the drug. They isolated the genes responsible for the production of artemisinin and transplanted them into yeast. But even after that, the process remained too expensive, so a group of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology transplanted these genes into tobacco chloroplasts (Nicotiana tabacum). Tobacco grows very fast, and with an increase in its green mass, the production of artemisic acid, from which artemisinin can be obtained, will also increase. By selecting the most effective combination of gene expression levels, the scientists achieved an increase in product yield to 120 milligrams per kilogram of raw leaf weight.
The authors of the work report that the harvest from 200 square kilometers of genetically modified tobacco plantations will be enough to meet the global need for artemisinin. They also believe that manipulations with the tobacco genome can make this plant a source of other hard-to-find medicines.
A study by Fuentes et al. A new synthetic biology approach allows transfer of an entire metabolic pathway from a medicinal plant to a biomass crop published in the journal eLife.
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16.06.2016