According to the UK Telegraph, a worldwide effort is underway to create Synthetic Yeast, which scientists believe will allow brewers to “make beer cheaper and stronger.”
From the article:
Researchers, who have been awarded £1 million of government funding for the project, will first attempt to recreate a slimmed down version of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the yeast used in the brewing industry to ferment beer.
It will be the first time a genome has been built from scratch for a eukaryotic organism, the branch of the evolutionary tree that includes plants and animals.
The scientists then aim to redesign parts of the yeast genome so that it can perform functions that are not possible naturally.
Professor Paul Freemont, from the centre for synthetic biology and innovation at Imperial College London who is helping to lead the British part of the project, said they could help make yeast more efficient so they required less energy and could tolerate more alcohol before dying, allowing beer to be made stronger.
He said: “The brewing industry is very interested in this project for any new opportunities it may present as they use yeast to manufacture beer.
“One of the aims of the project is to develop this yeast strain as a vehicle that you can put in new chemical pathways and directly manipulate it in a way that is not possible at the moment.
“Clearly there are strains of yeast that are highly resistant to alcohol, but they all die off as the alcohol gets higher, so making more alcohol resistant strains will be very useful for that industry in terms of cost value.
“Strains that are metabolically more optimal and don’t require as much energy will also be useful.”
The synthetic yeast project, also known as Sc2.0, will draw together expertise from around the world.
I can’t quite decide yet whether I think this is a good idea, offering brewers many more choices and opportunities to create unique beers or a Frankenstein moment of science going too far in manipulating an essentially natural process. I guess time will tell.
Soon the debate will come within the brewing community about this form of “genetic engineering”, a la what’s already going on about corn & other table foods. I’m inclined to agree with Jay on the “time will tell” issue. Given what we know already about the table food, “Frankenstein” certainly is a possibility. Mutations occur naturally, some good, some bad – & I see no reason to believe that they won’t occur after the man-made mutations. I’ve not read/heard of any genetic “spaying” being done so far after a man-made mutation – if any of you in Jay’s eclectic faithful readership has, clue us in, please!. Life of any kind evolves on a logartihmic curve; technology evolves on a parabolic curve, & the human paths crossed sometime in the early 1800’s. Macrobiotic organisms reproduce much faster than the rest of the plant & animal world, so have a much shorter curve, time-wise; each time they mutate, another curve begins.
For the non-math folks – logarithmic curves spike up early on a small angle from the vertical left-right, then bend right & ascend slowly over time. Parabolic curves are pretty flat @ the bottom, & & expand upward & outward at angles (usually) 20+ degrees from the vertical. In simpler terms. a logarithmic curve looks like a slightly curved & angled “L” that’s been rotated 90 degrees to the right; a parabolic curve looks like a “V” with a rounded bottom, & its sides are symmetrical, no matter the upward angle out from the bottom.