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If the particular enzymes that yeasts use to convert sugar into alcohol could be identified and synthesized, one could make a powder that could be mixed into any sugary liquid, producing instant alcohol.
[link]
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Instant water... just add water to this powder. |
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No, "sigh" because this unlikely to yield anything worth
drinking. Evidently, to [goldbb], "Chablis" and "Sauternes"
are foreign words. No, wait... |
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You mean as a biofuel? It's perfectly true that a given mass
of corn will have a greater energy content than either sugar
or alcohol prepared from it. On the other hand, do you really
want to put corn in your gas tank? Alcohol burns more easily
and more cleanly. |
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Fellow bakers, this idea merits more than your initial one liners. |
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The only problem with it is that the process to isolate these enzymes would be very expensive, making a single glass's worth of powder costing, let me do some math, about two million sand dollars. |
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Since when have trivial economics been a consideration of this august body, [daseva]? |
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My point exactly. Since the lonely problem is beside our interests, there should be more praise. I'll bun it. |
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I am neither bunning nor boning. However, from an
aesthetic and oenological perspective I must add a notional
bone. |
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it'd be even nicer if you could just tap a water bowl three times with a stick and produce alcohol... wibni [-] |
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//Instant water... just add water to this powder.//
And if it tastes a bit too strong after that you can always dilute it. |
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I would have though if sugar=>alcohol is a one step
wonder, then yes. But don't enzymes need
environments and procedural, geometrical staging
which only a mothering cellular structure can give. |
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There are a couple of processes whereby ethanol can be synthesised from other compounds. Why choose sugar and yeast enzymes? I would've thought making it from paper or cotton would be better. |
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The sugar-alcohol pathways are understood in some depth, so i guess the only reason this was not baked on an industrial scale is that synthesising enzymes to create a substance that can be harvested in abundance via natural pathways is not economic. Still, baked in labs around the world. |
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i could explain why this is impossible but to do it in any reasonable way would require the words "catalyst" "gradient" "membrane" "soluble" "reversible" "energetic" "active transport" "reaction rate". I won't instead because i just spent the last 48hrs tending to yeast, I will simply say [marked-for-deletion] WIBNIFty. |
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no, wine vats. it's early in the crush season here but the first few lots always seem to need more work than the rest. |
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Are yeast such prudes, that shocking them is that much of a concern? Better keep that issue of Playboy away from them :) |
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Seriously, WcW, do you have nowhere else to boast about the winemaking hobby you took up, probably recently since your understanding of fermentation is clearly slightly limited? |
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"Nevertheless, it was known that yeast extracts ferment sugar even in the absence of living yeast cells. While studying this process in 1897, Eduard Buchner of Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, found that sugar was fermented even when there were no living yeast cells in the mixture,[8] by a yeast secretion that he termed zymase.[9] In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research and discovery of "cell-free fermentation."" -- wikipedia |
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In other words, The catalytic reaction rates for the key enzymes in a given fermentation reaction are not entirely reduced outside the confines of the cell membrane. dependencies on active and passive (gradient) transport are thus avoidable and all that is required is that the enzyme be soluble and active in the aqueous. Though reversibility would be a keen advantage in a non-cellular fermentation, it's not necessary. Finally, I have no idea why you needed the word 'energetic', as it's not really used when speaking of enzymatic reactions, to my knowledge. 'Active' is much better. This is probably due to the fact that most enzymatic reactions release very little energy, and instead result in conformational changes in the enzyme and bond rearrangements in the reactants. That is, chemical potential is exchanged, and thermal effects are negligible. |
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yes there are many enzymatic processes for for reducing glucose to ethanol and yes these processes happen both inside and outside cell walls. The grape itself is capable of producing 2-3% alcohol within anaerobic metabolism. And we do a test for reducible sugars using zymase and invertase that can accurately detect reduceable sugars to .01% BUT an artificial pathway for the production of the enzymes in the Zymase complex has not yet been found, and you can imagine that the person who finds a cheap way to synthesize large quantities of any enzyme(without cells) will make $$$. Why is it so hard to produce the complicated enzymes involved in core cellular processes? This is due not only to the number of steps required to produce these compounds. Cells use a combination of catylized and thus reversible processes and energetic reactions that are not reversible, the products of these reactions are actively transported across membranes within the cell to segregate the steps so they do not interfere with one another as they would under the conditions of a test tube. Some of these reactions require different ionic conditions requiring the cell to produce osmotic gradients within it's structure using active transport. As you can see these are very hard conditions to achieve in a chemical process due to the contradictory requirements of each step. If we had yet developed the chemical engineering capability to produce these powerful macromolecular compounds we would not face the insurmountable energy and waste product challenges that we currently face.Synthetic Enzymatics is like nanotech, it holds extreme promise but still lies in the realm of magical thinking. |
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As the winemaker at a 2k case winery who does all of his own enzymatics using an ancient Beckman DU and basically everything else on any given day I take no offense at your suggestion that this is a "weekend" thing for me. At this time of year it's an every day of the week thing 18 hrs a day from first punch down. If you feel I "wear it on my sleeve" you are right, I wear it all the way up my arms. |
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Well, send me a freakin' bottle and take a few Jacksons off my hands. My mind is tired from reading your (insightful) garble. Seriously, my alchemical side would have it no other way than to tooth and nail for a drunk from, arguably, one of the most annoying-with-your-knowledge type halfbakers on earth. You wear it well, anyways, whatever it is crawling up your head. |
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I can't help but feel that you set me up to set you up for that tirade, however. Which is fine, a tad victimizing. |
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As a bedroom brewer, my hat's off to you, [WcW]. Where do I order from? |
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[Ian], I always thought that yeast ate sugar, farted CO2, and peed alcohol. |
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well we could go into the whole dna - rna - ribosome - shepherd - folding - hydrolising - pairing - transport = enzyme thing but I don't think that that would make it any simpler. Suffice it to say Zymase is not a single enzyme as many internet sites claim but a family of ten or more enzymes that all have to work together to strip carbon from glucose using the plant pathway . I'm not always right and sometimes I'm an outright bone headed fool when it comes to arguing petty and pointless things. I LIKE to argue. On the other hand your annotation was ad-homonym and actually full of wrong information. Let's be friends, we really have a lot in common. |
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//dna - rna - ribosome - shepherd - folding - hydrolising -
pairing - transport// That would be dna - rna - ribosome -
chaperone - folding - hydrolising - pairing - transport, shirley? |
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Ehh, sure! Why not. Anyways, yah! Max you tell him! What the shit is a shepherd, some cockney outdated backwoods biochem slang... Tune in man! |
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// cockney outdated backwoods biochem slang // |
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damn. it is chaperon. I need to get more sleep. |
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// Let's be friends, we really have a lot in common. // |
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We've been saying that for a long time .... come, join us..... don't be afraid .... you'll wonder why you ever hesitated..... |
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// cockney outdated backwoods biochem slang// Hmmm.
Cockney rhyming slang molecular biology - YESSSS! |
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Far from = far from 'ome = ribosome.
Spot = spot o'rain = membrane
Pearly = pearly gate = phospate
Weak tea = insipid = lipid
Double = double time = enzyme
Floppy dog = Hector = G-protein-coupled receptor. |
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I think we should try translating the original Double Helix
paper into Cockney rhyming slang. |
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Bugger all to serve with nachos = I've got no dips in = alpha
chymotrypsin. |
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This could revolutionize Western alliance. |
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Brewer's - Brewer's Droop - Flaccid - Deoxyribonucleic acid. |
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