Natural Cocaine Production in Plants Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Natural Cocaine Production in Plants - Essay ExampleThe coca make plant has mistakable biochemical properties as those that hold alkaloids. The coca plant belongs to a group of plants with natural alkaloids, or nitrogen-containing compounds that produce diverse set up on the physiology of humans. The alkaloid compounds in these plants are proven to have strong pharmacological effects on people and are known to contain nicotine, caffeine, quinine, morphine, atropine, strychnine, and the illegal stimulant compound cocaine. The plants that contain alkaloids accept the Solanaceae or potato family, the Brassicaceae or mustard family, and the Erythroxylaceae or coca family, to which the coca plant belongs. The close relatedness of these plants is not only justified by the fact that they all contain alkaloid compounds precisely also by the fact that they had a common ancestor around 120 million old age ago and that the alkaloid compounds that they contain obey similar biochemical pat hways. The significance of this fact is that if one were to uncover the details of the natural synthesis of cocaine, then it is possible to study it from the point of view of the other plants to which the coca plant is related (How Plants Make Cocaine, 2012). In the experiment conducted by researchers of the Max Planck Institute, in order to understand cleanse how protein is naturally made by the coca plant, the synthesis of alkaloids in a particular species of the Solanaceae family was compared with the biochemical synthesis of cocaine in the coca plant (Secrets of Natural Cocaine Production Revealed, 2012).