Tackling resistance
BERKELEY, Calif.—Scientists at UC-Berkeley and Amyris Biotechnologies biosynthetically produce high yields of antimalarial precursors in yeast
BERKELEY, Calif.—Multidrug-resistance is increasing in world efforts to tackle malaria, and this problem is only exacerbated by the short supply and high cost of the antimalarial drug artemisinin. To address this problem, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Amyris Biotechnologies developed a method to biosynthetically produce high yields of artemisinin precursors in yeast, offsetting some of the associated costs of arteminisin production. They described their efforts in Nature (2006, 440, 940-943).
