Deadly poisonous flowers may help develop new medicines, scientists find

Researchers have discovered that two highly poisonous flowering plants—wolfsbane and larkspur—could help pave the way for new medicines to treat pain, malaria and cancer, while also offering safer ways to control agricultural pests.

The study, led by scientists from Michigan State University (MSU) and the Czech Academy of Sciences, identified a method to reproduce part of the plants' complex chemical process in the laboratory. The findings were published in the journal Molecular Plant.

Although both plants can cause nerve damage and paralysis even in very small amounts, they also produce natural compounds with promising medicinal properties.

"These plants have been used in different forms of medicine throughout the world for thousands of years," said Garret Miller, a former MSU researcher and now an assistant professor of biotechnology at the University of Michigan-Flint.

He said understanding how these compounds are produced could open new opportunities for medical research and drug development.

Researchers said plants are remarkable natural chemists that have evolved over millions of years to produce complex chemicals for survival. Many everyday products and medicines, including caffeine, menthol and vanillin, either come directly from plants or are inspired by plant chemistry.

The research focused on a group of toxic compounds known as diterpenoid alkaloids, which are found in wolfsbane and larkspur. While these chemicals are highly poisonous, scientists believe they could also have valuable medical uses.

For decades, researchers have struggled to understand how plants produce these complicated molecules. One of the best-known compounds in this group, aconitine, was first isolated nearly 200 years ago, but scientists have still been unable to fully produce it in a laboratory.

The breakthrough came after researchers from the United States and the Czech Republic joined forces to trace the plants' natural chemical production process.

The team studied several species of both plants and examined thousands of genes to identify those involved in producing the toxic compounds.

After identifying key genes, the researchers inserted them into tobacco plants, which acted as living "biofactories" to test whether they could recreate the chemical pathway.

The modified tobacco plants successfully produced atisinium, a member of the diterpenoid alkaloid family, using six different enzymes.

Scientists said this marks an important first step toward understanding how these complex compounds are made and could eventually enable sustainable production of plant-based chemicals for medical research.

Researchers believe the findings could support the future development of new medicines inspired by these natural compounds while reducing the need to harvest toxic plants from the wild.