Gene Therapy Could Save Smokers' Life

Scientists found that tobacco plants contain a specific gene which reduces harmful carcinogens in cured tobacco leaves. Altered tobacco plants increase the risk of deaths among smokers.

Ralph Dewey and Ramsey Lewis, crop scientists at NCSU (North Carolina State University), worked very hard in order to find and to store the gene that turns nicotine into nornicotine, which converts to a carcinogen as the tobacco is cured, processed and stored. In one word they wanted to modify the genetics of the tobacco plants itself to reduce the mortality among people.

Dewey and Lewis underlined that the best way for people to avoid the health risks of tobacco is to avoid using tobacco products. Because smoking causes 87% of lung cancer deaths, according to the National Cancer Institute, and smokeless tobacco is linked to mouth and throat cancers.

Lewis added: "We don't want to claim we're making tobacco products safe. It's having an incremental impact that will have more effect on smokeless tobacco than on cigarettes. This is really for people who are going to use tobacco products anyway. They can be made a little safer."

The findings show that targeted gene silencing can work in the field. The field tests in Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina compared cured barely tobacco plants with the troublesome gene silenced and plants that had not been genetically engineered. The research results were published in Plant Biotechnology Journal, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

For about six years, Dewey and Lewis identified and isolated 40,000 to 50,000 genes in the tobacco plant that cause a nicotine molecule to convert to the compound nornicotine. Once they did that, they then used the techniques of biotechnology to shut that gene down and keep nornicotine from forming.

Dewey said: "If you greatly reduce the amount of nornicotine, you by default reduce the amount of NNN." After this research Dewey want also to develop tobacco plants that have the same low nornicotine characteristics without genetic engineering and to develop similar characteristics in other varieties of tobacco.