Slashdot Mirror
Designing DNA Circuits To Brew Tastier Beer
Al writes "Researchers at Boston University have developed a way to predict the behavior of different DNA segments and make synthetic biology a little bit more reliable. James Collins and colleagues have built libraries of component parts and a mathematical modeling system to help them predict the behavior of parts of a gene network. Like any self-respected bunch of grad students, they decided to demonstrate the approach by making beer. They engineered gene promoters to control when flocculation occurs in brewers yeast, which allowed them to finely control the flavor of the resulting beer."
These are synthetic biologists, not Nephrologists...
Damn fool BU geeks.
You don't use genes to manipulate beer, you use beer to manipulate jeans.
Kids these days....
Just like when all nuclear physics came to a head when Young Albert Einstein, then a lanky youth on the island of Tazmania, split the atom finally putting bubbles in beer. So much work for such a great deed.
The hype: Skyy Vodka
The reality: Skyy Vodka is a marketing company. Manufacturing is outsourced. They buy bulk ethanol from a MGP Ingredients (formerly Midwest Solvents Company) plant in Pekin, IL. MGP makes ethanol for beverage and industrial purposes. They used to sell ethanol for fuel, too, but that ended in February 2009 due to financial losses; their production costs were too high for fuel use.
The ethanol is pumped into tank cars and shipped by rail to Frank-Lin Distillers Products in San Jose, CA., which has their own railroad sidings. Frank-Lin bottles, along with Skyy Vodka, most of the low-end booze on the West Coast. They make everything from brandy to whiskey, by mixing ethanol, water, and flavoring. They make over a thousand different "brands", although they only have about a hundred different recipes.
Frank-Lin is very automated. They have automated bottling lines that can change from one bottle and product to another without human intervention, and equally flexible packaging systems. So they can create the illusion of thousands of products, all coming from one plant.
It's all just flavored ethanol. Deal with it.