Engineered just for you: pharmaceutical-grade yoghurt

12 May 2014
Sebastien Thibault


Forget popping pills: patients could get better by eating yoghurt. Richard Yu, an investigator at the Molecular Sciences Institute, Berkeley, is a yoghurt hacker. He describes the dairy product as a "scalable drug-distribution system". By splicing DNA into the genes of Lactobacillus bulgaricus, a bacterium used to make yoghurt, he believes personalised medicines could be delivered in a palatable format. "If you send someone a packet of dried yoghurt powder that's been engineered, and you have milk and a plastic tub, you can make this stuff," Yu says. "You don't need a fermenter, you don't need a standard molecular biology lab: you need a kitchen counter."

Yu is a cofounder of Yovivo! Probiotic. The team's first project involves cutting and pasting the four genes responsible for turning amino acids into resveratrol -- a substance that has been linked in human trials to moderating blood sugar levels and improving circulation in adults.

The DIY-bio approach could be applied to more than health: production of MDMA, say, or other more dangerous drugs could be democratised by the method. "The barriers to entry are very low,"

Yu says. As a result, his team is taking a cautious approach: "Unleashing designer organisms inside your cells, you have to be very careful," he says. "We want to do it properly. We're not cackling scientists, bubbling cauldron and whatnot."

Other notable yoghurt hacks:

Replacing toothpaste
In 2008, MIT created a Lactobacillus bulgaricus that makes a tooth-decay-preventing peptide.

Midnight snacking
Indie Biotech, an open-source biotech site, created a recipe for fluorescent yoghurt in 2011.

Relieving depression
In 2009, London-based designer Tuur van Balen demonstrated how yoghurt might produce Prozac.