Tobacco plants were transformed to produce five psychedelic drugs

Scientists have engineered tobacco plants to produce five powerful psychedelic compounds found in other plants, fungi and animals in the same crop. They argue that using plants to manufacture drugs would be simpler and more sustainable than existing processes, making research into therapeutic use and the production of future drugs easier.

Asaf Aharoni and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, modified Nicotiana benthamiana Plants use a technique called agroinfiltration, which involves using a bacterium to incorporate genes from other organisms into a plant. The modified plant then makes the proteins encoded by those genes, but the DNA is not incorporated into the plant’s genome, so the effect is short-lived.

By incorporating nine genes, the plant became able to produce psilocin and psilocybin, which are commonly found in mushrooms; DMT from various plants; and bufotenine and 5-Methoxy-DMT, compounds secreted by the Colorado River Toad (Insilius Alverius).

Aharoni says that plants can easily be permanently altered with changes that are inherited, but doing so can be problematic, because the compounds produced are commonly used as recreational drugs. “If we have inherited it, it’s a little difficult and then people will ask for seeds,” he says. “We can do it in tomatoes, potatoes, corn.”

The therapeutic uses of psychedelic compounds are becoming more popular and better understood, says Aharoni, but harvesting them from natural sources puts populations at risk from habitat loss and overexploitation. The drugs are synthesized chemically for use in research, but producing them in tobacco plants, which are easily cultivated in greenhouses, would be much easier.

The idea of ​​growing medicines through pharmaceutical cultivation, or “pharming”, is certainly not new. Plant-produced protein drugs have been approved in the US since 2012, and since 2002, maize has been modified to produce pharmaceutical proteins. Another research team used tobacco plants to synthesize cocaine in 2022, finding that it could produce about 400 nanograms of cocaine per milligram of dry leaf – about 25th the level of the coca plant.

Rupert Frey The UK’s University of Nottingham says about 25 percent of prescription drugs are derived in whole or in part from plants, and there is huge opportunity to create “green factories” that can develop new compounds in greenhouses.

“If you want to understand something, you have to be able to make something, so it’s useful to show that you can make it in tobacco plants,” Frey says. “As a technical accomplishment, to show that you understand the path and can do it, I think it has value.”