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Asked by to Amelia, Clem, Izzy, Sarah on 18 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Isabel Webb answered on 18 Mar 2014:
Many plants already make medicine chemicals that we then extract to treat illnesses. Once we understand how the drug works, we can edit it (using chemical reactions in a factory) to improve its action against disease.
Many scientists are investigating using biology instead of chemistry to edit medicines – so that we can get new and better medicines straight from plants. Reactions inside the body need ‘enzymes’ to help them to happen Enzymes are proteins which help specific reactions, either by joining two chemicals, or breaking one apart. Many scientists (including some where I work!) are researching the possibility of using GM to put new enzymes into plants, which would help improve the medicines they already make. In order to do this, they first need to understand what enzymes they need, and then find what other species already makes the enzyme, so that they can GM it into the species they want.
Malaria treatments already come from plants – such as artemisin from Artemisia annua. However, we don’t have a cure yet! Perhaps modifying the chemical from artemis could be the answer! There are probably lots of people researching malaria treatments, since it is such a big disease – and maybe already people investigating GM for that.
Another solution might be to GM plants to make chemicals to repel mosquitoes, which carry malaria. I don’t think anyone is doing this – but I know that researchers in Hertfordshire are using GM plants to repel crop pests like aphids!I don’t know where we get our current mental illness medicines from – but possibly they are originally from animals, since they need to work in the brain. Plants can be used as herbal remedies against illnesses such as depression – so maybe one day you will be right – and we will use GM to help improve the effects of the herbal remedies to make them real treatments!
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anon answered on 18 Mar 2014:
No so much yield, as carry the means to distribute medicines
A famous example is “Golden rice” which is a genetically modified variety of rice. This rice has a gene from daffodils which enriches the rice with Vitamin A
In certain parts of the world Vitamin A is a deficiency and can cause blindness and death, especially in children.
Just the presence of vitamin A in the diet can prevent some pretty nasty diseases!
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Amelia Frizell-Armitage answered on 19 Mar 2014:
One day we will certainly be able to do this yes! In theory we can make a plant produce any protein that we want it to (as long as this protein is not harmful to the plant), just by putting the right gene in. We can already make bacteria that produce antibiotics and medicines that we need, so it is only a small step up to make plants that can do this too. If plants could produce medicines this would make often expensive drugs much cheaper and easier to produce. However, at the moment it doesn’t look like this will happen any time soon as there are a lot of problems both with growing GM crops out in the field, and also making sure the medicines are clean and safe enough for human use.
There are of course plants that produce medicines naturally that we already use including drugs for cancer and also to treat malaria. There is a lot of work going on at the moment to breed these plants to make them more efficient at naturally producing the drug compounds.
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