💐Two famously deadly flowering ornamentals, wolfsbane and larkspur, may hold keys to powerful new medicines.
Scientists have just figured out how these plants build atisinium, a complex diterpenoid alkaloid known for causing nerve damage and paralysis at very low doses, but with intriguing potential for pain and neurological therapeutics.
By tracking thousands of genes in both species, the team identified six specific enzymes that assemble atisinium step‑by‑step. Then they recreated that biosynthetic pathway inside tobacco plants, effectively turning a common crop into a living bioreactor for rare, structurally complex molecules that are hard to source or synthesize at scale.
✅It goes to show that we live in a world where the deadliest flowers on earth can also be sustainable medicine factories.
As said by Björn Hamberger, study author and the James K. Billman Endowed Professor in MSU’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,
“Plants Are The Best Chemists Around…”
Reference: Garret P. Miller, Lana Mutabdžija-Nedelcheva, Trine B. Andersen, Imani Pascoe, Kathryn Van Winkle, Maryam Sabbaghan, Alexandre Bouillé, Tomáš Iliaš, Andrej Tekel, Tomáš Pluskal, Björn Hamberger. Characterization of the entry steps in diterpenoid alkaloid biosynthesis. Molecular Plant, 2026