How to build beautiful biochemical factories
30 October 2016
What connects insects sticking to the leaves of a tobacco plant and the production of the anti-malaria drug artemisinin? The answer is trichomes – the hair-like structures on the surfaces of plants – which once seen at high magnification in a scanning electron micrograph are never forgotten for their intrinsic beauty. But these beauties are, ironically, ‘biochemical factories’ involved in the production of secondary metabolites.