- For context the Cell paper published several weeks before [0][1] provides a more bird's eye view (multi-omics etc.) the Nature paper here is very hands on providing x-ray crystal structures etc.
So both complement each other well.
[0]https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674%2826%2900335-1
[1]https://phys.org/news/2026-04-nicotine-biosynthesis-wild-tob...
- Paradoxically, nicotine has some medical use in e.g. displacing viral debris and autoantibodies from nAChR (nicotinic acetylcholine receptors) due to having highest affinity to these receptors, which seems to help with (long) Covid; "smoker paradox" in lower covid-related hospitalizations.
- A molecule can be socially and medically associated with a very harmful delivery mechanism, while still having specific biochemical effects that are worth studying on their own. Ant that's interesting
- I was expecting to see a longer list of medical uses, but the wiki says that nicotine has performance impacts on cognition, improving fine motor motion and memory.
The pharmacology section is sophisticated.
- Nicotine is nice as much as coffee. Smoking kills though. I am not a doctor
- Great to see this here.
CIGS are bad, nicotine is pretty neutral to good,
as a lozenge or patch or gum.
Edit: Nicotine can be way more medically relevant than “less bad”.
Not sure what the person replying to me is even on about, tbh
- Really inhaling something burning is bad.
Pretty much every other form of tobacco that is not cigarettes is less bad.
- I would even go further: inhaling pretty much anything other than air is harmful in the long-term.
I imagine if you inhaled helium several times a day for decades that it would also mess something up.
- I don’t think this really holds up, for example helium itself is chemically inert and not toxic. The main risk from inhaling helium is probably oxygen displacement at a push.
Millions of people have been using inhalers to control asthma too, this well studied and agreed to be safe. This is just off the top of my head.
- Chewing tobacco causes mouth cancer. Nicotine is okay, everything else in the tobacco leaf no so much.
- On a scale from the-state-of-california cancer to exposed-to-sublethal-amounts-of-ionizing-radiation cancer, how worried should I be?
- It's a serious concern and switching to synthetic nicotine products may prolong your life. All tobacco products are highly carcinogenic. Contrary to what was said earlier it is not really about the smoking (though of course that makes things worse).
Nicotine products aren't safe; they are highly addictive and may exacerbate tumors that are already there. But they're far less addictive than tobacco products and they probably won't kill you.
- >it is not really about the smoking
I agree with you that tobacco is uniquely harmful, but smoking by itself is also bad by itself. Even exposure to smoke from campfires, if chronic, will elevate your risk for COPD, cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, etc.
- Smoking/smoke inhalation is not safe, it leads to all the bad outcomes you mention, and I encourage everyone to seek out alternatives like oral nicotine pouches and cannabis gummies. They will almost certainly improve your healthspan and may well improve your lifespan. I personally stopped smoking because my wife told me she wanted me around longer. I am all aboard the "smoking is bad for you" train.
But the role of the smoke itself is overemphasized which leads to a false sense of security. Switching from cigarettes to dip does lead to a significant improvement in mortality. But the real step change is moving to oral nicotine pouches, gum, patches, etc.
I'd also point out the risk from campfires and from cigarettes is not at all comparable. They are several orders of magnitude apart. Even smoking marijuana isn't nearly as dangerous as smoking tobacco. (Smoking marijuana is not safe, that just goes to show how ridiculously dangerous cigarettes are.)
- Inhaling? We're talking about a compound here, not tobacco.
- The HN guidelines say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says". The way I understand it is that different people on the thread often have different ways of thinking about the topic, and we shouldn't dismiss something because it's not what "we" were talking about. In this case, it was obvious to you that the parent was talking about smoking tobacco, right? So you can either engage with it, or not, but there's no need to reject someone's comment for not adhering to what you decided is the topic.
- Which parent?!
No!, we’re specifically trying to avoid talking about tobacco.
We’re trying to talk about nicotine!
- [dead]
- You may enjoy the original paper[0] a lot more, the simplified article is very... simple.
- Pairs well with https://phys.org/news/2026-04-tobacco-psychedelics-psilocybi... !
- And the implication is they can modify tomato's DNA to produce nicotine, just like Tomacco from The Simpsons. The Simpsons always predict everything.
- Simpsons did it!
- I came here to find someone saying this.
I swear we are heading toward McKenna's Peak Novelty in this timeline.
- The glucose part is especially interesting: the missing step wasn't just an unknown enzyme, but a transient intermediate that basically disappears by the end
- It would be great if they could improve upon it.
I find nicotine to be an underperforming chemical, despite its popularity. A bit more of a cognitive kick would be nice. Know what I mean?
- I get what you mean, but "more addictive stimulant with a stronger cognitive kick" is one of those product requirements that starts to sound less appealing the longer you think about it
- Your talking about cocaine right?
- Modafinil? Ritalin? The latter is great for tedious tasks.
- “1 hour, full power” is the dream. Something where I could get those last things done in the evening without disrupting my sleep.
Chemically possible? Why not?
- Lots of drugs will get you where you’re looking to go.
Going to bed and waking up an hour earlier,
working immediately upon wakefulness,
will keep you there.
- "The star that burns twice as bright lasts half as long, Roy."
- It's also great for totally messing up your brain chemistry and your reward wiring. Wouldn't touch it myself.
I'm sure if you did it once or twice a year it'd be fine but let's be real, anyone who's willing to take it in the first place (outside of having a genuine medical reason like narcolepsy/ADHD) will want to take it a lot more than that.
Besides, in the long run - measured over weeks or months - these absolutely will not give you a productivity boost anyway comparable to sorting out your sleep/exercise/diet/mental health.
- ADHD stimulants promised a lot in terms of motivation -- but only made me do the thing I already wanted to do instead of work... more.
So instead of plugging away on house work or chores or my employer's boring work, I was building compilers and databases from scratch at 3am, unable to sleep.
And then I checked my blood pressure. Oops.
Also seemed directly implicated in a loved one of mine acquiring an eating disorder.
1/10 would not recommend.
- Sad! It mush have been something amphetamine-based. Ritalin, from experience, makes me visibly grumpy, because everything is wrong! Everything should be properly fixed! The desk should be cleaned. The code should be reviewed, bugs fixed, tests expanded and enhanced. That ticket is annoyingly obvious, it should be done in 10 minutes, dammit. Well, more like an hour, but now it's fixed for real. The chair squeaks, it's insufferable, where are my hex bits? Etc, etc.
It wears out quickly enough though, maybe in 3 hours.
- I know there's at least one nicotine analogue that's been sold. Pretty sure it's carcinogenic, but maybe there are some other options.
- Interesting that some acacia produce nicotine and dmt..
- Yes but I'm just looking to be a little more focused on tedious tasks, not hang out with the machine elves.
- This isn’t how drug discovery works at all.
- [flagged]
- Well, the author specifically mentions the puzzle of how it produces nicotine. Nicotine was first identified and isolated as a chemical in 1828, based on a quick google. So, no one was wondering about nicotine production before then because they didn’t know what it was.
- How exactly would they ask that question 10,000 years ago if they didn't know what molecules were, much less nicotine?
- A curious question. Those same people also bred brassica oleraceae into so many different crops so they had to have SOME idea of how plants worked. Maybe they did not attribute it to molecules but growing conditions or locations, or something.
Either way somebody somewhere wondered about this before 1820.
- "They wondered how it worked" is different than "they wondered how it produced nicotine", what with "nicotine" being the name of the molecule.
- [flagged]
- Humans have definitely had some understanding of selective breeding for a long time, but only partial understanding of recessive genes and the risks of inbreeding (almost all societies have incest taboos, but that didn't stop the Habsburg lip).
- >Nicotine was originally isolated from the tobacco plant in 1828 by chemists Wilhelm Heinrich Posselt and Karl Ludwig Reimann from Germany, who believed it was a poison.[210][211] Its chemical empirical formula was described by Melsens in 1843,[212] its structure was discovered by Adolf Pinner and Richard Wolffenstein in 1893
30 seconds on Wikipedia would have given you context of when the separation of nicotine occurred. Kind of hard to guess how tobacco plants make nicotine when you don't know what it is.
- Seems like we're confusing "what" with "how".
109 points by sohkamyung 3 days ago | 47 comments