Word: tryptophane
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Wurtman says health food stores began selling tryptophan as a nutritional supplement and sold it for 15 years without approval from the Food and Drug Administration...
...Wurtman says, a Japanese company made a new bacteria to synthesize tryptophan, but the bacteria also produced a new toxin. Thus, when the drug was sold in health food stores about a month later, 45 people were killed by a disease caused by the new toxin...
...behavior. In the NIH experiments, Odenwald and Zhang inserted a normal version of the gene into embryonic flies, but transplanted the gene in such a way that it was activated in every cell. That's what apparently played havoc with the flies' sex lives. With every cell sucking in tryptophan from the blood, a shortage of tryptophan developed in the brain, where it has important uses. Since tryptophan levels were altered, the researchers hypothesize, the brain was unable to make enough serotonin, one of the neurotransmitters that carry messages between nerve cells. Serotonin is a multi-purpose chemical, and abnormal...
...called the "white" gene because, among many effects, it influences eye color, and a particular mutation in the gene causes a fly's normally red eyes to be white. The gene's specific job is to produce a protein that enables cells to utilize an essential amino acid called tryptophan. If fruit flies are unable to process tryptophan properly, then they cannot manufacture red eye pigment...
...fact sheet issued by the campaign says that 31 deaths and more than 1500 serious illnesses "have been attributed to a genetically engineered amino acid called L-tryptophan." The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) failed to regulate the sale of the product because it was not labeled as "genetically engineered," the sheet charges...