For centuries, humans have used these flowering plants as a tool to ward off wolves and to control agricultural pests. Just tiny amounts of the plants cause severe neurotoxicity and paralysis.
As a healing agent, humans have used the plants as a sedative, an anesthetic and to bring down fevers.
Scientists are now following suit. Researchers from Michigan State University and the Czech Academy of Sciences have found a way to reproduce part of their potent makeup in a laboratory and believe they can tap the plants’ chemistry for practical use.
What modern science can do in a lab is breathtaking, but the researchers say plants are unmatched in their ability to produce intricate natural chemicals as they change and survive over time.
After identifying the most promising genes from wolfsbane, also known as monkshood, and larkspur, often called delphinium, the scientists transferred their genetic code into tobacco plants. The tobacco became a convenient location for them to test whether the genes could reproduce the plants’ chemical process.
The modified tobacco did just that. Six enzymes worked together to produce atisinium [at-ih-SIN-ee-əm], a type of alkaloid found in both larkspur and wolfsbane.
By identifying the first biochemical steps in the process, the team found a way to study the alkaloid and its potentially useful medicinal properties. Their goal now is to use what they have learned to create new drugs based on natural products.
Larkspur and wolfsbane have long guarded their own secrets. Now, scientists finally have the recipe.