Still life in British art: York's pivotal role in Tate ... - University of York

the university of york magazineSpotlight17The discovery, published in the latestissue of Science, shows that themedical compound is controlledby a complex cluster of ten genesencoding five different enzyme classes. Thisis the most complex gene cluster ever foundin plants.The breakthrough came when thescientists found that poppy varietiesproducing noscapine express a numberof genes that are absent in varieties thatare noscapine-free. They then analysedthe inheritance pattern of these genes inhundreds of offspring from crosses betweennoscapine and no-noscapine varieties.When they saw that all of these genes areinherited together, the researchers realisedthey could be looking at an incrediblycomplex gene cluster. The identity andarrangement of genes in the cluster wasdetermined by cloning and DNA sequencing.“We were amazed to find that thisgene cluster encodes for almost the entirebiosynthetic pathway for noscapine,” saidCNAP Director Professor Ian Graham. “Withthis one discovery we have been able toproduce an outline of the pathway anddefine a number of the steps involved –something that normally takes years.”Since the 1960s, commercial industrialtechniques have focused on other medicinalpoppy alkaloids like morphine and thebaine,used to manufacture pain-relief medicines.Meanwhile noscapine was still beingextracted using traditional techniques whichhampered supplies and limited its use as afull-scale anti-cancer drug.Researchers from GlaxoSmithKline saythat the fact that the noscapine genesare grouped in a cluster means that plantbreeding will be faster and easier, allowingthem to use more up-to-date commercialtechniques to produce the drug and thusincrease its availability.Gourmet butterfliesspeed northWarmer summers have led the Brown Argus butterfly to changeits diet, allowing it to expand its range and spread northwards bynearly 80km, according to a paper by York researchers published inthe latest issue of Science.“Many species are shifting their distributionsnorthwards as the climate warms, but thispreviously scarce butterfly has surprisedeveryone by moving its range at over twicethe average rate,” said lead author, PhDstudent Rachel Pateman, of the Departmentof Biology and the NERC Centre for Ecologyand Hydrology.In the past, the Brown Argus caterpillarsfed mainly on rockroses, probably becausethe plant tends to grow on the hot southfacingchalk hills in the south of England,providing an attractive microclimate inwhich the caterpillars thrive. As summershave become warmer, the butterfly hasbeen able to switch its diet to species ofwild geranium.Co-author Chris Thomas, Professor ofConservation Biology at York, said: “Becausewild geraniums are widespread in thelandscape, the butterflies can now movefrom one patch of host plants to the next andhence move rapidly through the landscape –expanding their range, generation aftergeneration.”Once considered scarce in Britain, withpopulations in steep decline, the researcherscredit the Brown Argus’s dramatic reversal offortune to the effect of climate on its ability tochange its eating habits.Warmer temperatures have helped the Brown Argusextend its rangeNoscapine was one of the first naturalproducts to be chemically characterised.It was discovered in 1819 by the Frenchchemist Pierre Robiquet, who laterisolated Codeine. The compound has beenused as a suppressant in cough mixturesfor decades. More recently, it has beenreported to have anti-cancer activity andis currently in early stage clinical trials.Photo by Carol WalkerPhoto by Peter Eeles, Butterfly Conservation