A Way to Brew Morphine Raises Concerns Over Regulation

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sigmond

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All over the world, the heavy heads of opium poppies are nodding gracefully in the wind — long stalks dressed in orange or white petals topped by a fright wig of stamens. They fill millions of acres in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Laos and elsewhere. Their payload — the milky opium juice carefully scraped off the seed pods — yields morphine, an excellent painkiller easily refined into heroin.

But very soon, perhaps within a year, the poppy will no longer be the only way to produce heroin’s raw ingredient. It will be possible for drug companies, or drug traffickers, to brew it in yeast genetically modified to turn sugar into morphine.
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continued...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/h...ses-concerns-over-regulation.html?ref=science

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...ntists-yeast-that-can-make-sugar-into-opiates
 
Experts warn of criminal activity after discovery opens door for homemade heroin

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SCIENTISTS have figured out all the steps to make heroin and similar opiate-based painkillers without using poppies, opening the door for home-brewed drugs and even wider abuse.

While no one has yet reported making morphine in the laboratory from scratch, some experts are calling for regulations to prevent garage tinkerers from making do-it-yourself morphine, which can be converted into heroin.

Society needs to “think this through now before it becomes a reality,” said bioengineer John Dueber of the University of California, Berkeley, who led a team that discovered the final missing link of the process.

Poppy plants have been farmed for centuries for opium, from which morphine is derived. The controlled substance is often used after surgery to relieve severe pain.

For the past decade, various groups of researchers have hacked the DNA of yeast to mimic poppies, in hopes of creating cheaper and less addictive pain relievers.

So far, the yeast strains created can only perform the last steps of a long process that can lead to morphine and other narcotic drugs.

A team led by researchers at UC Berkeley discovered the missing piece — the first step in the process — and published the findings Monday in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

The genetically engineered yeast was able to convert sugar to a chemical that’s a precursor to morphine. While the researchers stopped short of producing the drug in the lab, their work lays the foundation for DIY narcotics without the need to grow poppies.

Experts said it’s still extremely difficult for people to make homemade morphine because the process is inefficient. Even scientists are years away from lab-made morphine that’s strong enough to treat pain.

With technology advancing, some point out that there could come a time when brewing morphine may be as simple as brewing beer.

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http://www.news.com.au/technology/s...-homemade-heroin/story-fn5fsgyc-1227359748520
 
slimvictor said:
This is really amazing.
Next, we need yeast that is genetically modified to turn sugar into MDMA, LSD, and DMT.
Go GMO!
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i've been thinking about this for years. anyone willing to fund me a fully equipped clandestine lab? ;)
 
But manufacture and possession of criminalised opiates is already illegal? Why do we need new laws because someone found a new way to make them?
 
MikeRWK said:
So they made codeine?
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No, a chemical compound called reticuline according to the study.

Imagine being able to produce opioid painkillers, antibiotics, and cancer drugs in the same way you’d brew beer, without ever leaving your home. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are hoping their latest research will lead to just that, with the help of a genetically engineered strain of yeast.

Poppy plants typically undergo over a dozen different chemical processes before ending up as the opiates morphine, codeine, and thebaine.

From there, pharmaceutical factories process the drugs further into higher-value drugs, like oxycodone and hydrocodone. Hoping to replicate this process without using poppy plants, a growing field of research involves genetically engineering yeast so that it can be thrown into a vat with sugar (glucose) and converted into these drugs.
In a new study published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, researchers describe how they were able to achieve the first half of this process.

Their modified strain of yeast was able to synthesize reticuline, which can be turned into the aforementioned opiates, from a derivative of glucose called tyrosine. “What you really want to do from a fermentation perspective is to be able to feed the yeast glucose, which is a cheap source of sugar, and have the yeast do all the chemical steps required downstream to make your target therapeutic drug,” said John Dueber, a bioengineer at UC Berkeley, in a press release.

While the team still needs to determine how to start the process with glucose rather than tyrosine, the steps they would have to take to go from reticuline to higher-value drugs has already been described in yeast, said Vincent Martin, a microbiologist at Concordia University in Quebec. Some of those steps were completed by Christine Smolke of Stanford University, who used a modified yeast strain — with three genes from the poppy plant and two from a bacterium that eats poppy waste — to convert thebaine into higher-value drugs.

The only hurdle left was to get yeast to start from the beginning. The current study takes care of that problem; reticuline is a precursor to thebaine. For their study, researchers took the enzyme responsible for giving beets their bright colors, modified its genes, and added them to the modified yeast. This allowed the yeast to convert tyrosine into dopamine, which can then be converted into reticuline and other drugs. Those drugs wouldn’t only be opioids, either. As part of a class of bioactive compounds called benzylisoquinoline alkaloids (BIAs), reticuline may also prove useful in the development of other drugs treating everything from spasms to infections.
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http://www.medicaldaily.com/homebre...-engineered-yeast-now-growing-industry-333874

(As usual a lot of news outlets are posting inaccurate, fear mongering headlines to gather attention.)
 
This is future science... Don't expect homebrew heroin anytime soon haha. Its certainly a very creative way to grow compounds from fermentation.
 
... said:
This is one of the dumbest media freakouts I can remember.
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I disagree, there are far stupider media freakouts. If a cartel could get their hands on the strain that produces reticuline, and the strain that starts with reticuline in the pathway they would have the beginning of a commercial sized production operation. More difficult would be figuring out how to remove the morphine as well as engineering the process as there is probably a point as the yeast starts concentrating things that it will be killed at certain levels (like how beer can only be produced to a certain percentage before it kills the yeast, certain sturdy strains are needed to approach much higher than 10% ABV) though I don't have a clue how sensitive yeast is to opioids, maybe it isn't.

'medicine cabinet' said:
This is future science... Don't expect homebrew heroin anytime soon haha. Its certainly a very creative way to grow compounds from fermentation.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebake_(slang)

;)

Not quite the same.
 
Haha yea after I posted that I thought about homebake. Low grade heroin made from morphine pills, the kitchen cook of the opi world. I've heard its not too bad. I'd take home bake over morphine pills.
 
^ Its not low grade if you know what you are doing. Theres not much of a homebake scene outside of New Zealand, maybe Australia
 
It's funny I've understood the homebake process well enough for years, but only after reading this thread do I understand the significance of 6MAM v 3MAM (as well as possible distinctness qualities that can present between homebale, ECP and Black tar in terms of subjective effects). Funny thing what a little thought can produce... And ironic but we need not go into that...
 
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