Scientists Try To Re-Invent The Beer

Remember all that putrid tasting beer you guzzled just because it was cheap? Wouldn’t you like a cheaper better tasting beer? Would you care if it were artificial? It could be coming to a liquor store near you.

British scientists hope to concoct a "designer" genome that could help brewers come up with more potent and less pricey suds,the London Telegraph reported Friday.

The effort, bankrolled by the British government to the tune of $1,510,300 in US dollars hopes to create a new form of bacterium genome that would then be inserted into the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae — and if successful would be the first time researchers have created a synthetic organism, the paper reported.

Scientists hope the new form of yeast would be more hardy than the kinds currently used by brewers, and that could allow beer makers to craft more potent beer at less cost.

Although headed up by the British, the project — known as Sc2.0 — will also involve scientists from around the world. Scientists downplayed fears that the artificial life forms could escape into the wild and change the ecosystem in unanticipated ways by assuring the Telegraph that the new life forms would be engineered so they are unable to survive in the wild.

As long as the taste survives in your glass. Would you drink this scientifically created beer? What’s the cheapest beer you ever drank?