Acetaminophen Metabolics
"Antipyretic drugs, by being analgesics, reduce not only the fever but also the pain."
~Clinical Manual of Fever in Children
We aim to genetically modify PCC 7942 to produce acetaminophen, a common mild anes-thetic and antipyretic recognized by the WHO as an essential medicine [1]. However, in many countrieswith lower regulations and faulty policies regarding drug manufacturing, acetaminophen can be syn-thesized with lethal toxins that result in hundreds of deaths worldwide [23]. Acetaminophen is oftenused in conjunction with opioid pain medications postoperatively to enhance pain relief, thus reducingreliance upon opioid pharmaceuticals [24].
We are using a previously engineered pathway in Escherichia coli as a model of acetaminophen biosynthesis to enhance PCC 7942 [26, 25]. The pathway converts chorismate, an abundant aminoacid precursor of tryptophan, phenylalanine, and tyrosine, into acetaminophen with the addition ofthe 4ABH gene from Agaricus bisporus, an edible mushroom, and nhoA from E. coli.