Malaria is a global health problem, where millions of people are being affected. It is a well-known fact that artemisinin is the only effective anti-malarial drug which is produced from the Chinese medicinal plant Artemisia annua. Currently, the prevailing issue is that the cultivation of Artemisia annua leaves cannot meet the global demand.

In response to the issue, Chinese scientists designed a genome sequence of A. annua, in order to metabolically engineer the plant lines to produce high levels of artemisinin.

The A. annua genome consists of 63,226 protein-coding genes, and it took several years to complete the sequence, due to its size and complexity. Finally, the Chinese research team generated A. annua lines that produced high artemisinin levels – about 3.2% of the dry weight of the leaves. The artemisinin seed samples were sent to Madagascar for field trial work. The ultimate goal of the team is to develop A. annua lines, of which the leaves contain 5% artemisinin.

Kexuan Tang, lead researcher said, “We hope our research can enhance the global supply of artemisinin and lower the price from the plant source; it is not expensive to generate high-level artemisinin lines. We have propagated hundreds of high artemisinin producer lines via cutting and selection and scaled up the production of these plants. Hopefully, our high artemisinin transgenic lines will be grown on a massive scale next year.”