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scientists figure out heroin synthesis in yeast (apparently)

Mad Dash

Mad Dash

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Sep 27, 2005
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http://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-figure-out-how-to-make-home-made-heroin-without-poppies


Researchers in the US have figured out how to make 'home-made' heroin using a modified form of sugar-fed yeast and an enzyme extracted from poppies, and warn law-enforcement officers that it’s only a matter of time before the drug hits the streets.

"We’re likely looking at a timeline of a couple of years, not a decade or more, when sugar-fed yeast could reliably produce a controlled substance (such as morphine)," lead researcher and bioengineer John Dueber, from the University of California, Berkeley, told John Ross at The Australian. "We need to be out in front so that we can mitigate potential abuse."
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How are they doing this? Apparently it would be so easy to make homemade heroin/morphine from yeast they are freaking out and planning ahead for the backlash already. How do we get ahead of them?
 
Fuck man I gotta get this recipe ASAP!!! Lol. I wish I knew md, I'd be all up on/in it. I'm gonna do some research on this one later. I'm wondering where I'd get the poppy enzymes though???
 
Why not just make the dibenzoate of morphine - identical effects? Carefully looking at MPs & BPs explains how the dehydration takes place.
 
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Oh yeah, the DEA finally is going wild!

Reminds me somehow of these 3D printed home-made weapons .... of course, the thought of replicating things / substances / molecules at home just by a downloaded recipe is not that new, but maybe we're advancing faster than I even imagined. Will become interesting for sure!

... and they are still behind that war on drugs, still thinking it's only a matter of time or energy or whatever and they will achieve a drug free world. Sad. How much could have been done if all the efforts for prohibition, war, destruction had been spent for science...
 
Researchers in the US have figured out how to make 'home-made' heroin using a modified form of sugar-fed yeast and an enzyme extracted from poppies,
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no they haven't

they've isolated one enzyme that is neccesary to make a key intermediate in morphine-type alkaloid synthesis [ref]. the yeast does not make morphine or heroin and even if it did the organism that makes synthetic morphine is not going to be accessible to the home user... it will stay confined to research/pharma labs at least for the near future

a yeast cell that masde morphine would need dozen of new genes and even then i'm not sure it would be any more effective than a poppy.

as long as poppy cultivation remains economically sensible people will be making morphine that way. as i've said on the topic of bioreactors before, it's all well and good that you can get yeast to make morphine, now think about how big of a reactor will you need if you only end up with aa few mg per liter of morphine... and ou have to isolate it from frothy dead yeast clogging all the filters
 
Seiko you ruined my night,lol. I make my own beer and wine couldn't imagine making my own dope. Hmmmmm I wonder what it would be like to ferment some poppies , I might have to try it. Probably need to mix some kind strong flavored fruit in there like blueberries because I'm sure straight poppies would taste disgusting.
Actually just looked it up and that is how laudanum is made,sort of. Actually opium was added to Brandy because it's less soluble in alcohol then water but I'm on the look out for poppy wine!

Yeah I just read up on the bioengineered yeast that produces heroin. The lady I read about is Christina Smokle from Stanford and from what I glossed over you need many years of schooling and state of the art equiptment to do this. They have produced hydro and oxycodone in the lab with this genetically modified yeast. I wouldn't think this is something the FDA or DEA would have to worry about someone being able to produce this in his garage for many ,many years(i'm 40 probably not in my lifetime)>
 
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For yeast and bacteria yields are very low for proteins and synthetic molecules, especially with increasing genes needed, consider ethanol is a metabolic byproduct an easy one that is.. Only on scale would it be reasonable and even then we are talking vat reactors, insane chromatographic setups, kg scale. Most likely the usage will never be there for this except for a few intermediate compounds which can explore morphine SAR a little bit further but are very difficult to access. I. E if we can produce an intermediate they takes 10-20 steps, the yeast yield can be higher because the yeast might accomplish the transformation in fewer steps, remember each step reduces your overall yield as yields are multiplicative. The compounds from this route will be retailed at thousands per milligram no doubt. Not worth
 
Zeds(NCO2CH2CH3)2 said:
For yeast and bacteria yields are very low for proteins and synthetic molecules, especially with increasing genes needed, consider ethanol is a metabolic byproduct an easy one that is.. Only on scale would it be reasonable and even then we are talking vat reactors, insane chromatographic setups, kg scale. Most likely the usage will never be there for this except for a few intermediate compounds which can explore morphine SAR a little bit further but are very difficult to access. I. E if we can produce an intermediate they takes 10-20 steps, the yeast yield can be higher because the yeast might accomplish the transformation in fewer steps, remember each step reduces your overall yield as yields are multiplicative. The compounds from this route will be retailed at thousands per milligram no doubt. Not worth
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Okay that was a bit over my head,lol! If I may speak from laymans terms is it the equivalent of extracting gold from seawater,ie possible but not cost or time efficient?
 
Given that the whole synthesis centers around a custom made to-order yeast produced by direct genetic manipulation rather than natural selection, it would be like extracting gold from seawater, except you need to make the organism that "makes" gold yourself first. Then grow the organism in a swimming pool, while managing microbe food, waste products, pH of the growth medium, antibiotics to supress other competing microbes, etc. Once you're at that stage you can attempt to "get the gold out".

You can't just go out to the store and buy a machine that will let you stick genes in cells either, there's a bit more nuance to it. This is firmly out of reach of cost efficacy for the time being.
 
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sekio said:
no they haven't

they've isolated one enzyme that is neccesary to make a key intermediate in morphine-type alkaloid synthesis [ref].
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This is what I meant by "going wild". Hell, what is wrong with the society that they have the time and resources to worry about something like this??
 
D is right - ridiculous. As I mentioned in passing, though, LPAC is going to be the next baddie that needs tackling. Since it's 1 reaction to 4-Me Aminorex, SOMEONE is going to see a HUGE outbreak of stimulant availability and, just as worryingly, a HUGE outbreak of deaths & disabled people from pulmonary hypertension. As an occasional (like an empathogen), no problem - daily for months? I recall a whole family with a factory on their land - if the DEA hadn't busted them, they would be dead in 2-3 months.
 
L-PAC can be made from benzaldehyde and dextrose using yeast fermentation.
 
I thought this was old news?

I came across this recently, not sure if it was discussed here....
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compoundchem dot com
 
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I think if you can get ton quantities of benzaldehyde (which is DEA watched) & a bioreactor you probably don't need to worry about much in terms of capital cost for drug production and you could do whatever you wish anyway...
 
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