An Update on Artemisinin

A quick tidbit:

Nature recently reported that production of artemisinin, an anti-malarial drug, has ramped up in a yeast fermentation system. I've written about artemesinin before, since it is the poster child for what many synthetic biologists hope for. Jay Keasling's Berkeley lab surveyed the known genomic resources, irrespective of the species which those genes inhabit, to piece together a scheme for synthesizing an artemisinin precursor in yeast. Artemisinin cannot be feasibly synthesized chemically, and so production has until now relied on extracting the drug from a shrub. The volatility of the supply has, unfortunately, made artemisinin availability and price vary widely. A yeast-based supply chain should circumvent the uncertainties associated with weather and the whims of the small farmers who produce most of the crop.

Image credit: Kristian Peters (via Wikimedia)

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An Update on Artemisinin

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