Battling Malaria with ... Baker's Yeast?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), malaria killed an estimated 655,000 people, mostly children, in 2010.  Artemisinin is an effective antimalarial  drug recommended by the WHO to be used in combination therapies. Artemisinin-based treatments could prove to be a silver bullet for the malaria scourge affecting developing areas of the world. There's just one catch: artemisinin is derived from Artemisia annua (Wormwood), an herb. Artemisia farming depends on the weather. Artemisinin may be only a small, small part of the overall plant mass, meaning that a great deal of resources (water, land, etc) are needed to produce small amounts of the desired drug. Thus, the current method of artemisinin production is unpredictable and inefficient. Queue, genetic engineering.

Molecular Biology - The Portal to Biotechnology

Suppose a researcher wants a cell to produce a particular protein—say, Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP). Now that we understand the central dogma, the researcher's path is pretty straight forward. First, the researcher would need a copy of the gene, usually from an existing source, like jellyfish DNA. There are many ways to insert the gene into a cell, and more ways are being explored. Let's say for now that the researcher puts the GFP gene on a plasmid (a circular piece of DNA that is self-replicating in a cell). To cut-and-paste a piece of DNA, scientists use restriction enzymes, which are like molecular scissors. They recognize specific sequences of the DNA alphabet and sever double stranded DNA in predictable ways. DNA ligase is like the glue, that bonds strands back together.