Secrets of Natural Cocaine Production Exposed

A group of biochemists in Germany have discovered some mysterious things about the coca plant and how its chemical makeup produces cocaine. Cocaine is chemically related to a bunch of anesthetics and other stimulants that are used each day legally. Understanding just how cocaine is made within the plant itself may just lead to some new types of anesthesia and anesthetic drugs but without the addictive traits.

Biochemist John D’Auria says plants must be our planet’s greatest chemists because they can’t run away; they have to learn to survive. D’Auria notes that plants simply make chemicals that other organisms cannot, including cocaine, according to a recent article.

If we can learn to understand the nature of the plant’s biochemistry we can learn to take away its bad properties and then keep the helpful anesthetic ones.

For nearly 8,000 years the South Americans have cultivated coca plants. Native South American tribes have cultivated coca to chew its leaves for religious purposes and also to suppress thirst and hunger.

In the U.S., few labs, if any, are even allowed to grow or study cocaine. D’Auria and colleagues began to look into the mysteries of the plant and studied the family of plants that are highly similar to coca plants.

Flowering plants from the potato or nightshade group known as Solanaceae also produce tropane alkaloids much the same as the coca plant. Though they are from different families both plants produce these alkaloids which have been used to produce medicines to fight motion sickness, treat ulcers and dilate pupils.

The team finally realized the coca plant wasn’t using the same enzyme as its sister plant to make the tropane alkaloids. Nature has discovered two completely different ways to create similar compounds of each. Coca plants make them in the leaves and the potato plants make them in the roots.