"Home Brewed Morphine" From Yeast Now Possible With Beer-Making Kit As UC-Berkeley Scientist Team Produces Final Intermediary Chemical Reticuline

     Tuesday, 19 May 2015, BERKELEY, CA - A team of University of California at Berkeley scientists published yesterday online in the journal Nature Chemical Biology findings that the team finally has synthesized the last "stumbling block" being the intermediate step of producing reticuline in genetically modified yeast in order to perform the complicated chemistry necessary to convert sugar to morphine. The scientists reportedly say that it should now be possible to perform all the required steps to "brew" morphine at home.
     Dr. John Dueber a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley said,

"What you really want to do from a fermentation perspective is to be able to feed the yeast glucose, which is a cheap sugar source, and have the yeast do all the chemical steps required downstream to make your target therapeutic drug. With our study, all the steps have been described, and it's now a matter of linking them together and scaling up the process. It's not a trivial challenge, but it's doable." 

     Morphine currently requires a poppy harvest to manufacture. Not only could morphine brewed from genetically modified yeast become easier to produce the steps in the process can be modified by scientists to develop new types of painkillers. A comment to the published findings notes that "[i]n principle, anyone with access to the yeast strain and basic skills in fermentation would be able to grow morphine producing yeast using a home-brew kit for beer-making."
     The use of microscopic organisms to make drugs is not a new concept in medicine as for example insulin for people with diabetes already for decades has been make in genetically modified bacteria. Although currently it purportedly is "technically demanding" to make these yeast strains needed to brew morphine at home some already are calling for consideration of how these yeast strains might be regulated since currently they can be used to produce morphine and with expected modifications other opioids and painkillers.
     Readers interested in more information about the above can go to the link to the BBC Health News article directly below including therein a direct link to the above journal article preview as well as adjacent links to related BBC News articles including "Morphine: The Cheap, Effective Pain Drug Denied To Millions." Readers interested in going directly to the the Nature Chemical Biology preview published yesterday can go to the second link below and/or those interested in going to the full study article can go to the final third link below.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32780624

http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nchembio.1816.html

http://www.nature.com/articles/nchembio.1816.epdf?referrer_access_token=D8QJxSD78uATupwB4LFp7dRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0Ocpo6Dbq1_LllflCKwtQuVGBuWKGy1kgdyCQ6uBeXKpIf4UqDvjnJOQpxbz9p3F_yOlBGwHd9BFdEAAbEDG8QTnZE7DImHAsPeOiDaSC5TGUwVk_qKkBzqxs6LYUc2nIs%3D&tracking_referrer=www.bbc.com

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