DailyDirt: Breaking Bad... With Yeast?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Sep 23rd 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

We've mentioned before how yeast can produce a bunch of useful stuff, beyond bread and beer. Synthetic biology promises to give us engineered microorganisms that can make almost any specialty chemical or even some biofuels. Brewing medicine might not be too far away, and it might be incredibly difficult to control "controlled substances" in the very near future.

Genetically modified yeast can produce opiates similar to morphine. And it looks like several other derivatives of potent painkillers can be made this way, too, possibly leading to ones that are less addictive or that have fewer side effects. [url]
Other scientists have coaxed yeast into producing THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), one of the psychoactive compounds in marijuana. It's still pretty difficult to do, but presumably, it will get easier and more economical. And by then, we'll have THC-infused beer brewed and on tap. [url]
Meanwhile, the FDA is proposing new rules to help distinguish copycat pharmaceuticals and biosimilar drugs. Adding four random letters to the end of a generic name medicine could reduce some confusion, but hopefully, in the end, everyone who needs critical drugs will get access to more affordable pharmaceuticals. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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Filed Under: biology, biosimilar, biotech, drugs, fda, gmo, health, marijuana, medicine, microorganisms, morphine, opiates, painkillers, pharmaceuticals, synthetic biology, tetrahydrocannabinol, thc, yeast

7 Comments

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lars626 (profile), 23 Sep 2015 @ 7:11pm

THC-infused beer. I am not sure I am ready for that. A few beers and you relax And have a legendary case of the munchies. The day this hits the market I am buying Frito-Lay stock.
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Guardian, 23 Sep 2015 @ 8:13pm

wont happen
they all make too much money making drug addicts

look up what an american company did with a wonder drug made from cone snails a few years ago....

bought it up and canceled it
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- Anonymous Coward, 23 Sep 2015 @ 11:01pm
  
  Re: wont happen
  And will unshelve it at the right oppurtunity...that's some opportunistic capitalism at its worst, but it's been done before. Like the shelved antibiotics I know exist but aren't commercialized just yet.
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Pixelation, 23 Sep 2015 @ 9:13pm

Sounds like beer making is about to get reaaaallly interesting.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Sep 2015 @ 10:58pm

I'm a pharmacologist, and this is awesome stuff I've only been aware of peripherally. It's nice to read this here where usually most of the news makes me rage. A very good alternative to using oil to make medication for sure (yes, for those unaware, there's not enough legal poppy crops to supply the industry so organic chemistry techniques to develop molecules from oil are very old and right now one can say 70% of opiate painkillers are made with oil...I'll throw one downer here, can't help it, if Afghanistan wasn't in the crosshair of the military-industrial complex for multiple reasons, one of 'em was get the Taliban out since they were killing poppy farmers in 2000, all that morphine transformed under heroin (which let's face it, should be used as a painkiller, it is in many european countries, orally, or for ER stuff, it would make things that are so dangerous like Fentanyl unnecessary, yeah there's many pharmaceutical opiates more potent orally than heroin), imagine how Afghanistan could get rich overnight if real capitalism was applied and pharma companies paid afghans to run farms, in peace. Nothing grows there, they've been selling this to buy food since forever, ridiculous how my country (not USA) was trying to show farmers how to grow other crops and in that climate, it required 700-800 dollars of chemicals to have maybe 100lbs of vegetables..ridiculous).

Yeast could be a revolution in many ways to reduce our use of petrochemicals.
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Mark Wing, 24 Sep 2015 @ 12:33am

The secret ingredient is love. And morphine.
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Coyne Tibbets (profile), 25 Sep 2015 @ 2:29am

Hemp without psychoactives
"Other scientists have coaxed yeast into producing THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), one of the psychoactive compounds in marijuana."

What I've been waiting for is someone to produce a hemp plant without any psychoactive compounds. I think having such a variant would add a lovely level of confusion to the ban on hemp plants, because hemp is valuable for other reasons besides smoking.
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