The familiar pounding head an nausea that follows having that extra glass of wine in the evening may finally become a thing of the past following a discovery by scientists in the US.
In research reported in a recent issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, scientists found that by altering the DNA of yeast, it is possible to increase the amount of nutritional components, while reducing the toxic by-products that cause hangovers.
The researchers used an enzyme as a “genome knife”, which allowed them to cut through the copies of a gene and prevent automatic corrections from occurring.
Professor of microbial genomics at the University of Illinois, Yong-Su Jin, who co-authored the research, explained:
“Fermented foods such as beer, wine and bread are made with polyploid strains of yeast, which means they contain multiple copies of genes in the genome. Until now, it’s been very difficult to do genetic engineering in polyploid strains because if you altered a gene in one copy of the genome, an unaltered copy would correct the one that had been changed.”
The professor went on to say that the technique could also be used to clone the enzyme that enhances malolactic fermentation, the process that gives wine much of is character. Preventing “improper malolactic fermentation” could reduce the toxic by-products in wine that may cause hangovers.
