Opiates are pain-relieving drugs that play a vital role in
palliative care. Morphine is a well-known
member of this class of compounds.
Opiates have been derived from poppy plants for thousands of years. The compound thebaine (paramorphine or
codeine methyl enol ether) - see structure below -is the natural product that
is the precursor for opiates.
Thebaine
Due to the incredible strides that have been made in regards
to genetic engineering, a team of researchers headed by Christina Smolke from
Stanford University in Palo Alto California has successfully incorporated genes
derived from a variety of plants including poppies, bacterial genes from
Pseudomonas and rodent genes into the yeast genome and endowed these modified
yeast organisms with the capacity to produce thebaine from a sugar source. This methodology required the successful incorporation
of 21 different genes – a monumental enterprise.
This is a significant breakthrough in the area of synthetic
biology for it suggests that eventually it will become possible to readily
produce large quantities of thebaine that can subsequently be used to produce a
variety of opiates. Smolke and her
colleagues avoided producing a modified yeast cell capable of producing
morphine directly from sugar in order to forestall the possibility of
inadvertently making the illicit production of morphine a practical reality.
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