Modifying Yeast for Drug Production in Beer – BioBeer

Posted by JonathanCline – November 13, 2008

How synthetic biology gets done in iGEM competition:


Jam08 Live: Rice – BioBeer from mac cowell on Vimeo. [1]

Before getting too excited though, keep in mind:

  • The experiment hasn’t been verified to work. The yeast “seems to be consuming some intermediate products” however the drug production hasn’t been verified.
  • The benefits of resveritrol may be dramatically overstated. It may take very large quantities of resveritrol to have any health benefits [2].
  • The public-at-large has responded very enthusiastically to this idea (same with the modified yeast for Bio Yogurt) — which may signal the tempering of the typical U.S. “No GMO!” paranoia. Random people have proclaimed: “I want to drink this beer!”, casting aside concerns of consuming genetic engineered products.
  • The most remarkable health benefits in both wine and beer may be due to the alcohol (reducing psychological stress); it seems no one (?) has a good study on this because no one studies non-alcoholic wine or non-alcoholic beer.
[1] Jam08 Live: Rice – BioBeer from mac cowell on Vimeo. Filmed by http://www.vimeo.com/macowel
[2] Beer: The Best Beverage in the World. Charlie Bamforth, Ph.D., D.Sc. of University of California, Davis, at PARC Forum. March 22, 2007. Watch the Video as wmv  Charlie Bamforth is Fellow of the Institute of Brewing & Distilling and Fellow of the Institute of Biology, Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists and has published innumerable papers, articles and books on beer and brewing.

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