Super Wine To Increase Lifespan?
A friend of mine showed this to me the other day and I wanted to share it with you. I’m not a big fan of GM foods, I think there is still a lot that we don’t know about the effects on our own bodies, but its interesting to see that at least some GM products might have positive effects on us!
Super-wine might boost lifespan
07 January 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Would you drink wine made from genetically engineered grapes if it had extra benefits? Such wine could be on the menu, thanks to a grape variety six times richer than normal in resveratrol, the compound in red wine associated with increased longevity, decreased heart disease and a host of other benefits.
Yuejin Wang and colleagues at the Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University in Yangling, Shaanxi province, China, made the supervine by equipping it with an extra gene from a wild Chinese vine. Vitus pseudoreticulata has an unusual variant of the stilbene synthase gene, which triggers resveratrol production (Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture, DOI: 10.1007/s11240-007-9324-2).
The team plans to make wine from the GM vine, though their main goal is to make grapevines more resistant to fungus, which is kept in check by resveratrol.
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From issue 2637 of New Scientist magazine, 07 January 2008, page 12
