The complex biochemistry that sees coca plants make cocaine has been unpicked and replicated in a relative of the tobacco plant.
Recreating the process by modifying other plants or microorganisms could lead to a way to manufacture the stimulant or produce chemically similar compounds with unique properties.
Biochemists have tried to map out how cocaine is made by the coca plant for more than a century, both because of its unique structure and for its uses in medicine, most recently as…
Alex Wilkins – New Scientist – 2022-11-25.
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