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Coffee's Caffeine-Producing Gene Isolated
There is a broader implication though: It's known that many drugs come from or are discovered in naturally occuring plants and then synthesized. If the genetic basis for these types drugs can be discovered and replicated, you could turn the human body into it's own pharmacy. Maybe synthesizing salicin internally could be as effective as taking aspirin? (and less irritating for your stomach) Or maybe if the fundamental genetic operations that synthesize chemicals/proteins is discovered (the microcode of cells?) you could even synthesize chemicals that don't occur naturally. Perhaps in the future a "pharmaceutical organ" will be hacked into the human body specifically for this purpose.
Of course there's the other side to this, where people will want to synthesize certain chemcials in opiates or marijuana ... Fun to speculate about, at least!"
What's the point of drinking coffee then?
I mean what's next...non-alcoholic beer?
;)
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
Wasn't there a few sci-fi books in the 70's about a society where children are created that do not sleep? What kind of society does slashdot think would be created as a result (seriously)?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
What would be the point of taking a pill to make your body naturally produce caffeine than taking a pill of caffeine? Still need to take something. And if you just want something that drips into your synapse 24 hrs. a day, why don't you just create something to coax your body to make it's innate productivity enhancers? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the way brain-affecting drugs worked was that they were analogues to internal chemicals, meaning that they bind to the same receptors, but are not actually those chemicals.
You are more than the sum of what you consume.
You are more than the sum of what you consume.
Desire is not an occupation.
If I were cleverer I would come up with a way to convert this to a song along the lines of 'Rock the body'...
Like 'Who's got the Knowledge to Hack your Body?!'
Come on, someone run with that idea.>:)
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
This would bring a whole new meaning to the term "wired with caffeine".
.sig
Hmm, if you could have your body produce drugs on demand, that would be really cool.
"Hey man...wanna get high?"
"Sure...hold on a sec" (turns on his marijuana-producing gland) "wheeeeee"
Not reading
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
They'll get sued by Starbucks & Juan Valdez for violation of copyright protection under the DMCA
Does anybody know if it is healthier to take caffeine in extracted, pill form than drinking it in coffee? I would imagine the impurities present in coffee are partially responsible for some of the side effects.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Anyone who's a long-distance runner knows the sweet feeling you get after a long run and how you get irritable and a little depressed when you don't run for a few days. This isn't so different from when my father used to get headaches without his morning coffee. We were both addicts: him to caffeine, me to endorphin.
It seems hacking your body so you get your morning caffeine without drinking coffee is like hacking your body to get endorphin with the requisite run. I think both of these miss the point: caffeine is only a pleasant side effect of people's very pleasurable coffee ritual just as endorphin is a pleasant side effect of doing something good for your body. To get these things without the work turns these rituals into just "using drugs". If the only reason people drank coffee was to get caffeine, we'd just start smoking crack cause it's much more effective and not much more expensive than Starbucks!
Naturally caffeinated potatos (or potatoes)... caffeinated celery... caffeinated parsley... caffeinated beef (mmmm)...
Guess so, Microsoft have been doing it for years now.
-- Soruk
Caffeinated fruit. Strawberries, bananas, grapes, oranges, you get the picture. Be healthy and get your wake up effect. Or just caffeinated tomatoes to help make Bloody Mary's better.
Caffeinated coffee beans. What?, you say, aren't coffee beans already caffeinated? Yep. But who says you can't enhance the genetic sequence to get the Super-Caffeinated bean?
Caffeinated malt, barley, and hops for the perfect all natural Beer for a little of the hair of the dog that bit you and a quick pick me up.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Say you body DID produce caffiene, after awhile your body would either become toterle or emune (god I can't spell) to caffiene to such an extent that you body would have to produce more, which it would come to toterlate as normal. Till one day you body would be in a state that caffiene would no longer have any noticeable effect (reguards of the dose). Then what the hell would you do for a caffiene buzz? Crank?
I would still donate my body to science for this. 3 hours to no sleep sounds like fun!
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
For info on caffine.
Thank you for not thinking.
If you could have a way to turn drug production on and off, this might work. But chances are the way to toggle production would involve some other drug, which brings in its own complication.
However, there is something to be said for natural drugs instead of the synthetic "equivalent". Many people complain that (pills and tasty treats containing) lab-created caffeine irritates their stomach more than natural caffeine.
Perhaps we can set up the human-organ-producing pigs to also produce caffeine. Then my new heart will be pre-adjusted to my addiction.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Novicaine was created by a bunch of chemists who had decided to try and synthesize cocaine. At the time, cocaine was commonly in use as a pain killer for things like nasal surgery (!) and dental surgery, but it was hard to get it in a pure form. So the chemists tried to synthesize it. They ended up with something that worked better - and differently - than they expected, but they didn't end up with cocaine.
Synthesizing any sort of a chemical involving large amounts of carbon is fiendishly difficult, as you can get something that is chemically equivalent and yet doesn't behave the same. And then you can get something that is chemically identical, right down to the way it folds, but is chirally different.
Anyone know if chirally opposite caffeine works on the brain? I'll stick with my coffee plunger until then.
Perhaps... perhaps they will even create a medication that will lower my caffeine tolerance back to mortal levels. I haven't gotten a coffee-buzz in years. I only get messed up and neurotic if I don't have enough coffee, and that's no fun. I like coffee.
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All generalizations are false.
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I like to watch.
Hmmmm. Creating our own painkillers as a replacement for aspirin? Let's extend the logic and see where this takes us.
As an insulin-dependant diabetic, I'd love to be able to tell my Generic Organ Implant[tm] to act like a pancreas and start kicking out insulin. (Given that my real pancreas is as useful as a paperweight as far as sugar conversion goes, and useless even as a paperweight given that it's sitting somewhere behind a kidney.)
Of course, given the technology to do that, I could presumably send the same message to my real pancreas, waking it up and telling it to earn its damn keep for once.
But let's extend this idea even further. Reprogrammable Organs! The body's own equivalent of FPGA's! Say I've been slacking on code and am running behind the product's shipping schedule -- I just tell my pancreas to hold off on insulin and start behaving like a brain to increase my programming speed. In the meantime, I revert to injecting insulin. Or tell one of my leg muscles to act like a pancreas, since I'm not using the legs anyhow (I'm sitting in a chair coding, remember).
The make-yer-own-apsirin idea is pointless anyhow. We already manufacture our own painkillers. They're called endorphins; a lot of painkillers are just synthetic endorphin analogues.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
In his "Culture" novels, the people have the ability to produce hundreds of pharmaceuticals in their genetically engineered glands. Nice to see it so close to happening in Real Life!
I guess I'll gland some Active and get back to work....
Instead, have glands that we can "control" in some fashion. When we need the caffiene, we have the gland make it. When we need the medicine, we have the gland make it. When we don't need it anymore, we turn it off.
How to screw your body up with the byproducts of this sort of do-it-to-yourself chemistry. Aside from getting the body to do useless things like manufacture caffiene (when there's a perfectly good source of it in q-q-quadruple es-s-s-spresso) genetic research on other fronts have been useful in trying to find a cure for Juvenile Diabetes by getting a diabetics body to manufacture it's own insulin.
I'm also not sure our conscious minds are better at regulating compounds in our bloodstreams than bio/analog processes, considering how judgement becomes impared with acclimation to a compound. i.e. becoming chemically dependant rather than just psychologically.
IMHO these are apples and sausages issues, has any warmblooded creature been found which produces the common plant compound of Caffeine?
The original story I heard on this was to breed plants to grow caffeine free tea and coffee. Quite a stretch from this posts interpretations.
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"Please stand still on your foot and touch your nose for 30 seconds."
or, if your pulse is over 200 beats/minute.
Fight Spammers!
What would this lead to? Soylent Green in regular and decaf?
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
If you don't smell like coffee when you sweat, you don't drink enough.
Decaffeinated coffee is the devil's brew
Fight Spammers!
The idea that we could create an artificial organ that could produce drugs on demand is really intriguing. Taking some material from Steven R. Donaldson's SciFi quintilligy (five book trillogy) I could see where that would be quite useful.
Imaging such an organ under concious control of its host (via electrodes in the brain or some such mechanism). In a tough spot and need everything you can muster? Poof! Produce a ton of adrenelin and other support chemicals to maximize your speed/strength/etc. Injured? Poof! Dump endorphins into your bloodstream to keep you from passing out from the pain, so you can get yourself to a hospital. Cramming for the final or falling asleep on a long drive? Poof! Measured caffine to keep you alert.
How about self-preservation? Detects the body has gotten too much anestesia during an operation - put out some stimulants. Need to fake your death? Have it out out measured amounts of curarae to simulate death.
And for spies, a suicide pill they can't take away from you.
The possibilities are endless.
Of course, whenever you use something like this you'll pay the price later (fatigue, twiches, withdrawl, migranes) - you never get something for nothing. But wouldn't it be great to have the choice?
Coffee takes a good half hour to an hour to kick in fully.
Crunch it dry. Hits you within a minute that way.
There is not just *one* gene responsible for producing caffeine, or any biomolecule. They are all produced through pathways consisting of multiple enzymes, and some sort of complex regulatory system where the cell might produce another molecule that inhibits one or more of the enzymes, or it may just stop producing enzymes and the "assembly line" get's backed up.
I like that analogy. Each enzyme is like a laborer on an assembly line. What they've found here is one gene that makes one enzyme. Disable that gene and the assembly line can't procede past a certain point. You cannot just stick that gene in another organism, and expect to have a caffeine factory!
It is however done, that bacteria are altered to produce chemicals, however in these cases, we don't care about gene regulation. They can spew out all the insulin they can!
A side thought about what they're proposing here. Many of these pathways are down-regulated by end product. It's feedback inhibition, like a thermostat. But I see a possible problem here. Say you have a 2 step process going from compound A through intermediate B and finishing at product C
A--->B--->C
^ |
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(please excuse the awful ascii art)
product C, in high concentrations stops production of intermediate B, but if the step from B to C is stopped, say by removing the gene for the necessary enzyme, there's nothing to stop the production of B, you'll end up with tons of B which may taste bad, be unhealthy, something, and no A, which may be required for something else.
B BB B
B B B
A--->B-X->C
BBB B BB
BB BB B B
Just some thoughts
-Hatta
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Of course there's the other side to this, where people will want to synthesize certain chemcials in opiates or marijuana ... Fun to speculate about, at least!
No kidding. Some day, it'll be feasible for someone to graft a THC gene into his own body so that he basically pisses marijuana. It's already silly for governments to wage war on a naturally occurring feral plant, but how much sillier will it be when it's no longer an external plant but instead one's own body? What'll happen when some enterprising and politically conscious person hacks his own genetic code so as to shit pellets with DeCSS engraved on them? Will his own offspring be contraband?
Head to the Midwest, and get yourself a good Lutheran cup of coffee - guaranteed not to disapoint.
My coffee and my beer are about the same color and consistency (I drink Guinness).
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I only drank one pot of coffee today. I cut down to two pots of coffee a day.
I had no problem reading this.
Fight Spammers!
Since my body is prolly already producing its caffine I might not care about this. I drink so much coke these days that my blood is probably 50% caffinated or more. You will hardly catch me without a coke in my hand.
Most hackers, sys admins and techies in general are prolly thinking the same thing.
Though it'd be nice for when I couldn't find a coke. Just need to find a way to make the process slow down or pick up as needed. Might have to install a dial. Only prob is if someone turns it up too fast by accident you might get seizures or something. It'd create a whole new series of medical problems (overdosing during pregnancy for instance)
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Alright, that said, I think this could really improve the state of decaf coffee. Currently, the way they make it is to (essentially) brew the beans once with an icky batch of chemicals that supposedly sucks out the caffiene, but leaves the flavor it. Yeah, right.
But, if they could just disable the caf-gene so the caffeine was never produced at all, then no intermediate step, and therefore better decaf! This would be useful for those times when you're trying to "cut down" because you're drinking 15 cups a day... switch a few to genetically engineered decaf, and you get all the yummy fun without all the speed.
Yes, it's true. We, as a race, have been hacking our bodies since we've had them. Many of you probably have similar daily hacks that you perfom, as do I, to tune and enhance the operation of our bodies.
We eat and drink caffeinated foods and beverages in an effort to enhance alertness and to defeat our own circadian rythms. We wear eyeglasses in order to improve on factory standard equipment and to protect these vital tissues from damaging rays whilst out and about in the Big Blue Room. Some of us even submit these oh-so-tender pieces of flesh to the awesome might of a laser for input correction and re-alignment. We wear an assortment of braces and supports to relieve muscle pain and fatigue, use caustic chemicals to enhance our physical appearance, and braces on our teeth to guide the growth and placement of what would otherwise be non-parallel placed mastication devices. And then there's the whole Pandora's box of plastic surgery...
See what I mean? I know, I know, you're saying "but I want to tune my endorphin output using a heads-up display in my peripheral vision!" Hell, so do I. That's just hacking at the next level. We have been hacking our bodies for so long, most of us using the equivalent of rootkits, that we tend to forget that we are doing it. When articles like this talk about getting ready to hack your body they do so by keeping all of the daily hacks we all participate in below the base-line of what is currently possible.
Humans will create something not because it is needed but instead because it is possible. Once these things are made and used widely then they are, in effect, just another part of the human body, or more accurately a module which can be elected for use or not. We are already hacking our bodies, just not at the desired level. This is good. For what good would a hack be that had no room for improvement at a later date? Boring, I say. So bring on the cybernetic implants, the gene therapy, the bio-computers peppered about my person and the nanites on the rampage within. Bring it on, and let the hacking continue!
Hacking a body to make it perform better instead of optimally is a bad thing.
You say the human body could syntetize caffeine itself but you could be much more friendly with your body by sleeping some time, even like Dali's flash sleep.
Look at the "Tour de France": Most of its performers are taking loads of alien drugs and though they finish in the Tour's few first, finish completely stoned out of the competition.
It is because of the current level of competition and because of the mediatic heavy fire that people feel likle beating more and more records not even because of the original sane thing that people call challenge or self-improvement but because they need recognition that people won't usually offer them if they just happen to be only cool.
So, yes, of course, you could make your body synthetize coffee, drugs or even adamantium but it will still secrete shit on a dayly basis and you'll still have to do with this.
What will be the next improvement ? Hermaphrodism ?
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
> I'm wondering just how pervasive the US
> computer caffine cluture is internationally.
Seen from Denmark the coffein obsession is an American phenomen. Everybody here drink some disgustingly strong tasting coffee in absurd quantities, and the idea of decaffenated anything (coffee, tea, cola) is meet with puzzlement. Why would anyone want that? The point being, most people here are coffein junkies, and don't know it or recognize it as a problem.
Nerds are probably *less* coffein-addicted than the average population, simply because cola contains much less coffein than coffee.
The reason that drugs "work" in the human body is because the the molecular structure of the drug fits a natural "keyhole" somewhere.
:)
Basically the body has natural recepticle's for natural hormones... drugs fit those keyholes - often imperfectly. Your body thinks caffeine is adrenaline and acts (mostly) accordingly. Your body naturally produces adrenaline, and it works a hell of a lot better than caffeine.
I like caffeine because I can get a rush while still being a computer slug, but I understand the difference.
I suspect if we could turn on and off adrenaline like we drink coffee, the body would develop some resistance...