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.
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
