Cocaine is extracted from the leaves of the coca plant Alamy Stock Photo
The complex biochemistry that sees coca plants make cocaine has been unpicked and replicated in a relative of the tobacco plant. Recreating the process by modifying other plants or microorganisms could lead to a way to manufacture the stimulant or produce chemically similar compounds with unique properties.
Biochemists have tried to map out how cocaine is made by the coca plant for more than a century, both because of its unique structure and for its uses in medicine, most recently as …
