A latest research project undertaken by UC Berkeley researchers has showed that it is possible to genetically modify yeast to produce opiates from sugar. Dangerous drugs can be easily made using this method. Morphine and opioids are generally prescribed by doctors to help patients get relief from intense pain.

Poppy plants are the only source to create these drugs; however, researchers have been making efforts for decades to create inexpensive opioids, but success has not been achieved so far.

Efforts were recently made by a team of researchers from UC Berkeley to produce the drug in the lab. They wanted to create genetically engineered opioids and morphine. A sixteen step long process was performed by them to achieve their goal.

They began with separating an important enzyme from sugar beets, known as reticuline. Gene mutation task then helped them make it more useful. The addition of numerous foreign DNA accomplished the objective in the end.

The study was discussed in detail by Christopher Voight, researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to him, the process will allow people to produce opiates at home. The newly developed method is a perfect recipe for rise in drug abuse.

Details about the technique devised by an international team of researchers to make morphine and similar painkillers without growing opium poppies have been published in Nature Chemical Biology.

The process as of now requires 30 litres of genetically engineered yeast to produce 30 milligram dose of morphine. But scientists are optimistic that some improvement in the process will result into producing the same amount of morphine dose from a glass of yeast culture grown with sugar on a window sill.