Scientists solve 200-year-old puzzle of how tobacco plants make nicotine

Summary

Scientists solve 200-year-old puzzle of how tobacco plants make nicotine News Posted on Monday 18 May 2026 Scientists have uncovered how tobacco plants naturally make nicotine, solving a mystery that has puzzled researchers for nearly two centuries. The puzzle of how tobacco plants produce nicotine ha been around since the late 1820s The discovery, published in Nature Communications, could lead to safer production of medicines and vaccines using tobacco plants, without the unwanted nicotine. Nicotine, the chemical that makes tobacco products addictive, has been used by humans for over 10,000 years. But despite decades of study, scientists never fully understood how plants like Nicotiana tabacum - the main source of tobacco - actually build the nicotine molecule. Scientists have now discovered the missing genes and enzyme that tobacco plants need to make nicotine, and recreated the process in the lab and inside living plants, proving how it works. Contamination Dr Benjamin Lichman, from the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP) at University of York’s Department of Biology, said: “Tobacco plants can be used in biotechnology as platforms for producing vaccines or other pharmaceutical products, but it is plagued by the presence of nicotine which contaminates the products and requires processing to remove it. “The puzzle of how tobacco plants produce nicotine, however, has been around since the late 1820s, when nicotine was first extracted from the plants. Since then no-one had cracked the mystery of how it was made. It is a big moment in plant science and biochemistry that we now have the answer we have been chasing for more than 200 years! “With this new knowledge we can remove or repurpose the nicotine that is produced naturally by the plant and create better biotechnology tools, and there is also exciting potential for the future to adapt tobacco's nicotine forming system to make useful pharmaceutical compounds.” Glucose molecule The team, which included res...