The myopia required to claim that "The puzzle of how tobacco plants produce nicotine, however, has been around since the late 1820s" is egregious considering we've evidence attesting to tobacco use dating back twelve thousand years.
Does the author genuinely believe that no one wondered in the ten thousand years between our earliest example of tobacco use and 1820?
bicx 53 minutes ago [-]
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.
tracerbulletx 55 minutes ago [-]
How exactly would they ask that question 10,000 years ago if they didn't know what molecules were, much less nicotine?
galleywest200 47 minutes ago [-]
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.
furyofantares 24 minutes ago [-]
"They wondered how it worked" is different than "they wondered how it produced nicotine", what with "nicotine" being the name of the molecule.
someguyiguess 8 minutes ago [-]
That’s true. Only your pedantic interpretation is correct.
irjustin 23 minutes ago [-]
Seems like we're confusing "what" with "how".
karunamurti 1 hours ago [-]
And the implication is they can modify tomato's DNA to produce nicotine, just like Tomacco from The Simpsons. The Simpsons always predict everything.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-72705-0
Does the author genuinely believe that no one wondered in the ten thousand years between our earliest example of tobacco use and 1820?
Either way somebody somewhere wondered about this before 1820.
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?