eub | Tamiflu from star anise; optical isomerism and me; bacteria resistant to antibacterial soap and ALL

The Wikipedia article on oseltamivir (Tamiflu) says that the world production of oseltamivir is limited by the supply of star anise:

the major bottleneck in oseltamivir production is the availability of shikimic acid, which cannot be economically synthesized and is only effectively isolated from Chinese star anise; although most autotrophic organisms produce shikimic acid, the isolation yield is low. A shortage of star anise is one of the key reasons why there is a worldwide shortage of Tamiflu (as at 2005). Star anise is grown in four provinces in China and harvested between March and May. The shikimic acid is extracted from the seeds in a ten-stage manufacturing process. 90% of the harvest is already used by Roche in making Tamiflu.

Me, I have been editing the Wikipedia article on optical isomerism, which is all well and good except that I am thinking the entire complex of stereochemistry-related articles needs to be refactored. Wikipedia's system -- for history tracking, and for discussion -- is really all built around editing of individual pages.

A 2001 CDC conference paper with some interesting detail on how triclosan works and how bacteria develop resistance to it. Apparently antibacterial soap selects not just for triclosan resistance but for UBERBACTERIA.

MarA is a component of a multiple antibiotic resistance locus, marRAB. When marA is activated, the cell becomes resistant to antibiotics, oxidative stress agents, organic solvents, and antibacterial agents (14). [...] Strains that overproduce the marA or soxS protein (which is a marA homologue) upregulate the AcrAB multidrug efflux pump which pumps out pine oils, organic solvents, triclosan,quaternary ammonium compounds, chloroxanol, and chlorhexidine (4).

We have identified clinical strains of E. coli that are resistant to triclosan because they are also Mar mutants (4). From these and other data, selection for Mar mutants can potentially occur by antibiotics or by antibacterial agents.