Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Can the Sot-Weed be good for you?
After all those years of smoking it, scientists are finally getting around to looking at tobacco and studying the ways it can work for good.
The seeds are tiny as a flea and germinate like crazy. In less than a month, you can have a robust green crop that’s good for much more than smoking. You can grow vaccines in it. Extract protein from it. Make drugs from it...And if their efforts pay off, the plant that made so many people rich while it made so many people sick may end up repaying the cost of those years.
Tobacco is often called the white mouse of the plant world, and Nicotiana tabacum has been turned inside out for study. The first studies of nicotine, in which researchers watched how a chicken’s leg twitched when exposed to the drug, were conducted in the late 1800s. They led to the discovery — and naming — of nicotinic receptors in the brain that play a key role in neurotransmitting.
The plant itself has relatively few genes, so it’s easy to manipulate to maximize any trait — low or high nicotine, faster maturity, slower burn rate, tougher leaves for finer cigar-wrapping.
It has a density of high-quality protein, and extracting, purifying and exploiting the value of that protein is where Hodge saw opportunity for Maryland growers. So a team of University of Maryland researchers also have been fooling with tobacco for the past several years.
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