Homebrew opiates?
2015-05-18 16:49:20.89157+00 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Nature: Drugs: Regulate 'home-brew' opiates:
You's hypothetical scenario is becoming a reality. One week after the iGEM competition, two developers of opiate-producing yeast strains approached us, specialists in biotechnology policy. They had results in advance of publication, and requested advice on how they might maximize the benefits of their research while mitigating the risks. Now, published papers by these researchers — John Dueber at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues1, and Vincent Martin of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and his colleagues2 — describe all but one step of an engineered yeast pathway that converts glucose to morphine (see 'Brewing bad'). Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Calgary have put in place the final piece3.