Our taste for alcohol may be an ancient craving!
The ability to metabolise ethanol — the alcohol in beer and wine — might have originated in the common ancestor of humans, chimps and gorillas roughly 10 million years ago, a new study has claimed.
The event took place perhaps when this ancestor became more terrestrial and started eating fruits fermenting on the ground. Chemist Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, came to the conclusion by “resurrecting” the alcohol-metabolising enzy-mes of extinct primates.
Benner and his colleagues estimated the enzymes’ genetic code, built the enzymes in the lab and then analysed how they work to understand how they changed over time. “It’s like a courtroom re-enactment,” said biochemist Romas Kazlauskas of the University of Minnesota.
Benner proposed the idea to “re-enact what happened in evolution”.
Today, humans rely on an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase 4, or ADH4, to break down ethanol. The enzyme is common throughout the oesophagus, stomach and intestines, and is the first alcohol-metabolising enzyme that comes into contact with what a person drinks.