Coca plants’ production pathway for cocaine finally unravelled

The pathway used by coca plants to produce the tropane alkaloid cocaine has remained a mystery since it was first isolated in 1855. Now, two groups have reported the missing steps in the biosynthesis.

Tropane alkaloids are secondary metabolites produced in multiple species of plants. Cocaine from Erythroxylum coca and nicotine from multiple species in the family Solanaceae are two of the most famous. Others, such as scopolamine, littorine and hyoscyamine are important pharmaceuticals. Biochemist John D’Auria at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research led a team that used a yeast screening platform to reveal the entire cocaine biosynthetic pathway in E. coca.¹ A group led by Sheng-Xiong Huang at the Kunming Institute of Botany in China also independently published a portion of the same pathway.² The two papers report similar findings but disagree on the ordering of a methylation and ring closure step unique to these heterocyclic tropane alkaloids.