The compensation we receive from advertisers does not influence the recommendations or advice our editorial team provides in our articles or otherwise impact any of the editorial content on Forbes Health. Second, we also include links to advertisers’ offers in some of our articles these “affiliate links” may generate income for our site when you click on them. This site does not include all companies or products available within the market. The compensation we receive for those placements affects how and where advertisers’ offers appear on the site. First, we provide paid placements to advertisers to present their offers. This compensation comes from two main sources. To help support our reporting work, and to continue our ability to provide this content for free to our readers, we receive compensation from the companies that advertise on the Forbes Health site. This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on September 4, 2014.The Forbes Health editorial team is independent and objective. “I have to have a cup every morning, but I usually don’t drink during the day because it makes me shaky,” says Albert. The process of removing caffeine currently involves chemical processing, and also affects the flavour (see ' Plant biotechnology: Make it a decaf'). A coffee cultivar that is genetically engineered to be caffeine-free could be a welcome development for the many people who cannot tolerate the buzz. The genome could be used to identify genes that help the plant to combat diseases, such as coffee rust, and to cope with climate change.Ĭaffeine-making genes might also be inactivated to create a tastier decaf. This suggests that the ability to make caffeine evolved at least twice, in the ancestor of coffee plants and in a common ancestor of tea and cacao, Albert says. Tea and cacao, meanwhile, make caffeine using different methyltransferases from those the team identified in robusta. The genes encode methyltransferase enzymes, which transform a xanthosine molecule into caffeine by adding methyl chemical groups in three steps. When the team looked for gene families that distinguish coffee from other plants, those that make caffeine topped the list. The results were published on September 4 in Science. “Caffeine also habituates pollinators and makes them want to come back for more, which is what it does to us, too,” says Victor Albert, a genome scientist at the University of Buffalo in New York, who co-led the sequencing effort. For example, coffee leaves contain the highest levels of caffeine of any part of the plant, and when they fall on the soil they stop other plants from growing nearby. However, the robusta species was selected for sequencing because its genome is simpler than arabica’s.Ĭaffeine evolved long before sleep-deprived humans became addicted to it, probably to defend the coffee plant against predators and for other benefits. Arabica contains less caffeine, but its lower acidity and bitterness make it more flavourful to many coffee drinkers. The species accounts for about one-third of the coffee produced, much of it for instant-coffee brands such as Nescafe. An international team of scientists has now identified more than 25,000 protein-making genes in the robusta coffee genome. It is brewed from the fermented, roasted and ground berries of Coffea canephora and Coffea arabica, known as robusta and arabica, respectively. The coffee genome has now been published, and it reveals that the coffee plant makes caffeine using a different set of genes from those found in tea, cacao and other perk-you-up plants.Ĭoffee plants are grown across some 11 million hectares of land, with more than two billion cups of the beverage drunk every day. Caffeine's buzz is so nice it evolved twice.
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