The Changing Landscape of GMOs in Beverage Alcohol WRITTEN BY GABE TOTH
GMOs of the Future, Here Today A NEW GENERATION of genetically engineered products are working their way into the beverage alcohol supply chain, but these aren’t the GMOs of 20 years ago. New methods, such as CRISPR/CAS-9 technology, are allowing researchers to make more precise, targeted changes to a genome, and distillers may soon find ingredients that use these new techniques in their toolbox. Some yeast labs are already offering strains that tap into the potential of gene editing. Berkeley Yeast in Oakland has made headlines touting their bioengineered yeasts. Omega Yeast in Chicago offers a variety of both traditional and engineered yeasts. Engineered yeasts, currently marketed primarily towards brewers, include a series that increases thiol content (as sulfur compounds, that’s probably not an ideal choice for distillers), a group that eliminates diacetyl production, and yeasts that are tweaked to be POF (phenolic off-flavor) negative. Modifying organisms is nothing new to human culture, from unintentional or unconscious crop and animal selection reaching back to prehistoric times to more intentional efforts such as Robert Reid working in the late 19th century to improve his namesake yellow dent corn that’s become a staple of domestic corn production. Modifying organisms is nothing As the 20th century reached its midpoint and the nuclear age arrived, researchers increasingly relied on mutation breeding — new to human culture, from using powerful agents such as chemicals, x-rays, or gamma rays unintentional or unconscious to induce a higher rate of mutations in an organism, then sifting through the results to find the desirable trait they’re looking for crop and animal selection and breeding it into existing stock. reaching back to prehistoric The first methods for recombinant DNA — the insertion of times to more intentional efforts. DNA from one type of organism into another — were developed in the 1970s and 1980s, with products beginning to enter the market in the ’80s and ‘90s. (Recombination can be illustrated by the often-exaggerated research effort to insert genes from flounder into tomatoes to improve frost tolerance. It’s worth noting that no fish-mato was ever brought to market or even pursued beyond the initial research phase.) W W W . ARTISANSPIRITMAG . C O M
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