Rice Students Make Anti-Aging Beer... Wow

Despite what the traditionalists might have to say about baseball, I think we all know that beer drinking is America’s favorite pastime. You can drink it no matter the weather, you don’t need to buy tickets, and it’s a bipartisan drink that you can enjoy with your republican friends. Now, a bunch of Rice University students are trying to make it even better by manipulating it to have anti-aging properties.

According to Technology Review:

Since headlines began trumpeting the antiaging effects of red wine a couple of years ago, the traditional toast to good health has become more meaningful. But students at Rice University, in Texas, think that beer drinkers shouldn't be left out. They're trying to engineer a yeast that produces the antiaging chemical found in red wine--resveratrol--and use it to brew "BioBeer" with a health boost.

"It's not going to prevent you from getting a beer gut from drinking too much beer, or from getting cirrhosis of the liver," says Taylor Stevenson, one of six undergraduates working on the project. "But people are already drinking beer, so why not make the activity a little healthier?"

[…]

The BioBeer project is an entry in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition being held this weekend in Cambridge, MA. The event showcases student work in the field of synthetic biology, in which researchers string together blocks of DNA--whether artificial or naturally occurring--in order to build useful new organisms from scratch.

Many of the blocks of DNA identified by synthetic-biology researchers have been recorded in the open-source Registry of Standard Biological Parts at MIT. Participants in the iGEM competition submit their own DNA blocks to the registry, and they may use parts from the registry in their projects. The BioBeer team will submit 16 blocks to the registry, Stevenson says.

That’s genius. Maybe for their next project the Rice kiddoes should try making whiskey that increases breast size. Even if the BioBeer project fails though, beer will still earn high marks from most of America.