Researchers have reproduced the entire biochemical pathway for how coca plants make cocaine in another plant, which could help people manufacture the drug for scientific study
There was another experiment a few years ago where scientists did exactly that but with opiates instead of coke. They spliced poppy genes into yeast that enabled opiate biosynthesis alongside the regular fermentation.
Unfortunately the yield is so extremely low that it is nowhere near practical. And if I remember correctly, it takes multiple fermentation steps chained together with different strains of engineered yeast to complete each step in the biosynthesis. But this stuff has the potential to end the war on drugs if the process could be simplified and made more efficient. At that point we'd just need the yeast to leak once and it'd be out into the world forever.
There was another experiment a few years ago where scientists did exactly that but with opiates instead of coke. They spliced poppy genes into yeast that enabled opiate biosynthesis alongside the regular fermentation.
Unfortunately the yield is so extremely low that it is nowhere near practical. And if I remember correctly, it takes multiple fermentation steps chained together with different strains of engineered yeast to complete each step in the biosynthesis. But this stuff has the potential to end the war on drugs if the process could be simplified and made more efficient. At that point we'd just need the yeast to leak once and it'd be out into the world forever.