Tobacco "face changing": mass production of antimalarial drugs instead of Artemisia annua

Experts from Max Planck Institute of molecular plant physiology in Germany have invented a method to extract artemisinin from tobacco, which can meet the needs of mass and cheap production of antimalarial drugs The research was published in the scientific journal eLife Malaria is by far the most devastating tropical disease in the world, affecting hundreds of millions of lives The most effective anti malarial drugs include artemisinin, which is extracted from an Asian plant, Artemisia annua In October 2015, Tu youyou and two other scientists won the 2015 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for her contribution to the creation of new antimalarial drugs - artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin Unfortunately, due to the geographical and quantitative limitations of Artemisia annua, the global demand for antimalarial drugs is so great that mass production has never been possible Limited by the growing environment and region of Artemisia annua, antimalarial drugs are difficult to achieve mass production At present, the most effective production system is to produce artemisinin, the direct precursor of artemisinin, by yeast semi synthesis The cost of artemisinin production is increased because yeast production needs a large number of expensive synthetic media and large capacity bioreactors need to operate in sterile conditions Artemisinin, extracted from Artemisia annua, has recently been developed by experts from the Max Planck Institute of molecular plant physiology in Germany to produce the drug through tobacco The research team of Mapu Research Institute calls this new method costrel, which is a combination of super change means to transform and remodel the plant chloroplast: 1 Transfer the gene of key enzyme in artemisinin synthesis to the nucleus and chloroplast of tobacco plant, change the chloroplast gene, and then produce the so-called chloroplast to transform tobacco 2 Then, in the best chloroplast transformed tobacco, another group of added genes are injected into the plant nucleus The added genes can regulate the material metabolism of tobacco and make the plant produce a molecule called artemisinic acid 3 Researchers can extract artemisinic acid from plants and convert it into artemisinin by simple chemical reaction The metabolic pathway of biosynthesis of artemisinin researchers tested more than 600 kinds of tobacco with different artemisinin substance transformation genes, and found that 120 mg artemisinin can be extracted per kg In hundreds of transgenic plants generated by the experimental line, each has a different assembly of genes Artemisinin extracted from tobacco can be used to mass produce antimalarial drugs at low cost to meet the needs of patients in developing countries In the near future, costrel method can also be used in other complex biosynthetic drugs The new method can extract artemisinin from tobacco