Researchers resurrect the gene extinguished in plants with major implications for the development of drugs

Researchers from the Northeastern University have resurrected a extinct vegetable gene, making the evolutionary clock back down to open the way for the development and discovery of new drugs.

More specifically, the team, led by Jing-Ke Weng, professor of chemistry, chemical biology and bio-engineering in the northeast, repaired a deceased gene in the coyote tobacco plant.

In a new article, they detail their discovery of a type of cyclic peptide before unknown, or mini-protein, called Nanamin which is easy to bio-engineer, which makes it “a platform with enormous potential for discovery of drugs”, says Weng. The document is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It will provide chemical biologists with other tools to develop new treatments against peptide cancer, to discover new antibiotics and also for agricultural applications for defense against pathogens and insects,” explains Weng.

Plants have led countless innvations in the discovery and development of new drugs. However, Weng says that there has been a more recent turn towards compounds synthesized by humans which are not as effective as the use of the natural evolutionary process of a plant.

“If you start with random compounds, it is actually quite difficult to make it take drugs,” said Weng. “The evolution for hundreds of millions of years has done its job, so most likely Nanamin and its analogues already play certain roles in nature. We are simply taking advantage of this and use this for the discovery of drugs.”

This is where cyclical peptides offer an opportunity. Composed of short amino acid chains, cyclical peptides are very small and almost tailor -made for use in the development of drugs.

“Cyclical peptides are much smaller, so it’s like a drug with a small molecule but has the chemical characteristics of a protein. You can also engineering,” says Weng. “We can easily generate a library that produces millions of these peptides that can be used for drug screening.”

The Weng Institute for the Plant-Human Interface previously discovered that cyclical peptides exist in plants, which has brought it to Coyote tobacco, which is common in the west of the United States. While Weng and his team plunged into the genetic code of this plant, they discovered a pseudogen who was no longer functional.

This particular gene had previously coded the cyclic peptide nanamine in coyote tobacco, but over time, due to adaptive mutations, it had faded in the evolutionary past. But that did not prevent Weng and his team.

They found that this gene still existed in related plant species and, using a new method called resurrection of the molecular gene, cloned the gene and corrected the mutation.

“To our surprise, we were able to recover the ancestral function of this gene,” explains Weng. “We are trying to play the process which, otherwise, would take tens of millions of years to occur naturally, to be able to do it in a few months or years in a laboratory.”

Beyond the resurrection of an extinguished gene, Weng affirms that their research proves the viability of cyclical peptides, and of the nanamine specifically, as the foundation of a certain number of new uses.

Nanamin’s size and chemical mutability make it an asset to discover new drugs; Weng and his laboratory already use it to discover new drugs for cancer treatment. However, his uses also extend to agriculture, he said.

In 2024, his laboratory began collaboration with Bayer Crop Science and they used cyclical peptides to develop anti-insect features in corn and beans. The ease with which they can be easily coded and transplanted in the cultures of their original host factory is a new approach to building crop resilience in a changing climate.

More broadly, diving into genetics and chemical traits of tobacco Coyote has helped researchers “capture evolution in action” in a way that could help us understand and appreciate the plants that we are walking almost every day, he explains.

“All the lifestyle of plants is to be a very good chemist,” explains Weng. “These are masters of chemistry. They must evolve to produce as many compounds as their unique languages ​​to communicate with the outside world. … This is an example that we discover here.”

This story is republished with the kind authorization of Northeastern Global News.northeastern.edu.