Opiate-free Poppies could aid fight against malaria

[LibLabUK]

Genetically modified plants potentially fighting the disease that's kills more people every year than war... pretty amazing stuff.

Gene silencing can stop the opium poppy producing morphine and instead force it to produce large amounts of a compound useful in the fight against malaria.

The poppy Papaver somniferum accumulates morphine, codeine and other opiates in its latex - its sap-like substance. The synthesis of these opiates in the plant involves a long and complex series of steps.

A team led by Philip Larkin from CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra, Australia, used RNA interference (RNAi) to silence - or “turn off” - the genes responsible for producing an enzyme called codeinone reductase. This in turn stopped the synthesis of the opiates at the stage at which a compound called reticuline is produced.

"Instead of morphine and the other opiates, large amounts of reticuline are accumulated in the latex," says Larkin.

Ethnobotanical studies of traditional herbal remedies for malaria from around the world have found that the active ingredient is very often an alkaloid comprised of two reticuline molecules. There is an urgent need for new anti-malarial drugs, and poppies modified by RNAi silencing or mutation could be an ideal source of reticuline, says Larkin.

Source:New Scientist

[Dogmudgeon]

1. "Magic Mushrooms" had a similar use

Before the presence of psilocybin was well-known, mushrooms of the genera Psilocybe, Panaeolus and Stropharia were used to treat tuberculosis. I suppose the tests were limited to a very few volunteers, likely very ill patients, and as far as I was able to find out, nothing much became of it, since effective anti-TB medications were developed after WW2.

It might be worth taking another look at the possibility that the mushrooms produce useful chemicals in addition to the psychedelic ones.

--bkl