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  • RESEARCH BRIEFINGS

Engineered yeast brews precursors of anticancer drug vinblastine

We genetically reprogrammed yeast to produce the alkaloids vindoline and catharanthine — the longest biosynthetic pathway to be transferred from a plant to a microorganism. In principle, similarly engineered yeast strains could produce more than 3,000 other monoterpene indole alkaloids and unnatural analogues.

This is a summary of: Zhang, J. et al. A microbial supply chain for production of the anti-cancer drug vinblastine. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05157-3 (2022).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02256-z

‘Expert opinion’ and the figure are published under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

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