Scientists invent hangover-free booze, deserve all the awards

Science may have discovered a way to make booze that doesn’t leave you with a painful hangover, thereby reducing alcohol’s unpleasant consequences to guilt, shame, and unplanned pregnancy.

Researchers lead by Yong-Su Jin at the University of Illinois’ Energy Biosciences Institute, claim to have engineered a strain of yeast that could have massive implications for lushes everywhere by both increasing the health benefits of alcoholic drinks such as wine and reducing the painful morning-after consequences.

It all comes down to “designer yeast.” Using something called a “genome knife” (which must be the most badass tool in the laboratory after the chemical burn shower) Yong-Su Jin and his colleagues were able to alter the genes within specific strains of yeast to “jailbreak” the yeast. This, he says, could allow winemakers to tinker with yeast strains to increase the healthy components of wine, such as resveratrol, while reducing the amount of toxic byproducts that cause booze’s well-known hangover.

As with any preliminary scientific research there are a lot of mays and mights here and I still have a lot of questions: Will this yeasty hack only work on classy stuff like wine? Will it increase the price of the Tecate/shot combo at my local bar? And how much of this pain-free wonder-drink did scientists consume during the course of their “research”?

In any case if this works this year’s Nobel Prize is obviously a lock.

[Eureka Alert!]