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Health nuts. Photo: CC/Gretchen Robinette

Talk about a “eureka” moment in the making: Rice University students are working on a beer packed with resveratrol, the latest miracle antioxidant for health-conscious pill-poppers.

Beer contains antioxidants. But it lacks the very best stuff:

Resveratrol, abundant in red grape products, is known to make fat, old mice, mighty again.

No one knows the effects massive doses of the compound might have on humans, however.

The Rice researchers, who will present their research at an MIT biotech confab in November, say it will be a few years before anyone should be drinking their amped-up brew.

My prediction: a mad young scientist will swill some of the stuff “before its time,” with surprising consequences.–mb

Rice’s “BioBeer” will be entered in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition Nov. 8-9 in Cambridge, Mass. It’s the world’s largest synthetic biology competition, a contest where teams use a standard toolkit of DNA building blocks — think genetic LEGO blocks — to create living organisms that do odd things.

via Better beer: College team creating anticancer brew