Study substance from tobacco plants fights malaria

Artemisinin is the most important weapon in the fight against malaria. However, the active ingredient is so far very expensive due to the elaborate extraction from a low-yielding medicinal plant. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology have now succeeded, with the help of a new method, in producing the precursor of artemisinin, artemisinic acid, in large quantities.

Tobacco plant active ingredient against malaria. Image: vski - fotolia

The naturally occurring Artemisinin is produced by the weed Artemisia annua, the one-year mugwort, in only small quantities. The production of artemisinic acid in tobacco, a crop with high leaf yield, would be a way to make the drug more cheaply and thus make it available, above all, to patients in developing countries.

In a first step, the team of scientists transferred the genes for the most important enzymes of artemisinin synthesis into the genome of the chloroplasts of the tobacco plant. The modification of the chloroplasts produces so-called transplastomic plants. The best of these plants were then selected to insert another set of genes, but now directly into the nucleus of the plants. The additional genes interfere with the regulation of the metabolic pathway and ensure that the synthesis of artemisinic acid is increased once more. (Source)