Engineered yeast paves way for home-brew heroin
Advance holds potential for better opiate painkillers — but raises concerns about illicit use.
by Rachel Ehrenberg, 18 May 2015

Biotechnology is about to make morphine production as simple as brewing beer. A paper published on 18 May in Nature Chemical Biology [DeLoache, W. C. et al. Nature Chem. Biol. 2015] reports the creation of a yeast strain containing the first half of a biochemical pathway that turns simple sugars into morphine — mimicking the process by which poppies make opiates. Combined with other advances, researchers predict that it will be only a few years — or even months — before a single engineered yeast strain can complete the entire process.

Continue: http://www.nature.com/news/engineered-yeast-paves-way-for-home-brew-heroin-1.17566