A South African plant with the sweet Latin name of Helichrysum Umbraculigerum is known to produce cannabinoids usually found in Cannabis, some of which may have new medical uses.
In a study published in the journal Nature Plants, researchers from the Israeli Weizmann Institute have identified more than 40 cannabinoids in this variety of Helichrysum. The team revealed the series of biochemical steps the plant takes when making these compounds and also showed how these steps can be replicated in the lab to synthesize or even engineer new cannabinoids.
“We have found an important new source of cannabinoids and developed tools for their long-term production that can help explore their enormous therapeutic potential,” said Dr. Shirley Berman, who led the study, at Jerusalem Post.
This variety of Helichrysum is traditionally eaten in South Africa. German scientists had already studied the plant in 1979 and found cannabigerol (CBG), the cannabinoid that gives rise to the others in Cannabis.
Today, Berman and his colleagues, using a battery of advanced technologies, have confirmed this first report, as well as the presence of CBGa, the precursor of CBG. On the other hand, they found neither CBD nor THC, but sequenced the entire genome of theHelichrysum Umbraculigerum and used advanced analytical chemistry techniques, including high-resolution mass spectroscopy, to identify the types of cannabinoids it contains.
Using nuclear magnetic resonance, researchers have revealed the precise structure of more than a dozen of these cannabinoids and other related metabolites. They traced the entire biochemical pathway involved in the production of cannabinoids and determined where in the plant they are made.
The plant produces its cannabinoids mainly in its leaves, unlike Cannabis where it is the flowers that produce these active ingredients. Despite this difference, scientists have found many commonalities between Helichrysum and Cannabis. In particular, the enzymes used in each step of their cannabinoid production process belong to the same families throughout the first half of the biochemical pathway.
“The fact that during evolution two genetically unrelated plants independently developed the ability to produce cannabinoids suggests that these compounds serve important ecological functions,” Aharoni suggested. “Further research is needed to determine what these functions are. »
Dr. Aharoni’s team has already taken their latest insights into cannabinoid genetics a step further, using them to generate the newly discovered cannabinoid-making enzymes in tobacco plants. Researchers have also successfully used these enzymes to create finished cannabinoids in yeast, hinting at a new method of making the compounds for research and the biotech industry.
In the future, the results of the study may even lead to the manufacture of cannabinoids that do not exist in nature. These could be designed to bind better to human forms of cannabinoid receptors, for example, or to achieve specific therapeutic benefits.
“The next exciting step will be to determine the properties of more than 30 new cannabinoids that we have discovered, and then see what therapeutic uses they might have,” Berman concludes.
