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Many plants, including opium poppies, produce (S)-reticuline, a molecule that is a precursor to active ingredients with medicinal properties.Smolke's team and two other labs recently independently discovered which enzyme reconfigures reticuline, but even after this enzyme was added into their microbial factory, the yeast didn't create enough of the opioid compound.So they genetically tweaked the next enzyme in the process to boost production.Smolke's team inserted DNA into the yeast that encodes instructions for the cells to make the enzymes necessary to perform the sugar conversion steps.The baker's yeast was engineered with 23 genes from six different organisms: the brown rat, the goldthread herb, the California poppy, the Iranian poppy, the opium poppy and a soil bacterium called Pseudomonas putida.The process unveiled by Smolke's team represents "proof of principle experiments" showing that the bioengineered yeast can produce small amounts of opioid painkillers from scratch, says SmolkeCurrently, about 16,600 litres of bioengineered yeast would be needed to yield a single dose of the medication.Smolke says the process needs to be improved to make it efficient enough for commercial production, saying this could take several years.Stanford University holds the patents on the technology described by the researchers, who have formed a company to pursue the commercial applications.
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