With regards to using plants to grow medicines in space - I think that it it makes more sense to use microorganisms for this. So I am trying to reason whether there is a reason why one would prefer to use a plant.
Perhaps since plants already have more complex bio-synthetic machinery to create secondary metabolites than bacteria, fewer genes would have to be added to produce the target molecule. Fungi also have a lot of powerful systems already built-in. I think that it will be a case-by-case basis, a specific target molecule will be easier to produce using a specific organism.
So a space medicine farm could end up being interestingly diverse… For example, goats have been genetically engineered to produce milk that contains spider silk.
Eventually I do think that metabolic engineering could move far enough that it will be possible to engineer whatever machinery you want into easier to grow microorganisms. Then we will just grow everything in flasks in shakers and bioreactors.
Afaik, it depends on where the medicine came from, if it’s from a eukaryote (compounds from plants, fungi, animals) then it may be glycosylated, and you’d therefore have to produce it in a host that supports glycosylation (another eukaryote). I think prokaryotes also have some features of transcription and translation that make them different to eukaryotes, but I can’t remember off the top of my head.
But to be honest, I think the point of this may be that growing stuff in a plant is easier than using a bioreactor or flask.
For a plant, you need:
- Soil
- Water
- Light
- A bag of seeds
For a bioreactor you need:
- A bioreactor (not cheap)
- Sterilisation equipment
- Closed processing equipment (tubes, filters, tube welders)
- Bioreactor control device
- Biological safety cabinet to work in
- Sterile media, probably with specific additives depending on your cell line
- All of the numerous plastic consumables used in modern labs
- Liquid nitrogen storage of cells
- Probably some more stuff
Dunno about you, but the former sounds easier to do in a space station to me.
EDIT: didn’t consider extraction of the molecule, in both cases of plant and microbial production, that would require eome specific equipment. Probably centrifuges and chromatography required for both.
Those are some great points, thank you! I wasn’t aware (and if I ever was, I forgot!) that glycosylation was much more common in eukaryotes than in prokaryotes - that is very interesting.
EDIT: didn’t consider extraction of the molecule, in both cases of plant and microbial production, that would require eome specific equipment. Probably centrifuges and chromatography required for both.
Still, I think that the technical requirements for an extraction are much more accessible than an industrial a bioreactor setup. So your points still stand.
Another point I can think of is that storing a bunch of seeds in tubes at room temperature for many decades is trivial compared to cryo-storing microbes. Might make it easier to handle if you decide to produce the genetically engineered plants on earth. Just collect a few seeds from each strain that produces a specific useful thing and germinate the seeds when you need it
Something somewhat related that I found. It’s just a small introduction to ClusterCAB. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-online-tool-millions-molecules.html https://clustercad.jbei.org/
