Scientists reveal the ancient origins of drinking alcohol
There’s an emerging branch of research called Paleogenetics that tries to answer the questions of the present by scrutinizing the genetic material of the past. And when it comes to figuring out when drinking alcohol began — igniting both merriment and alcoholism — you need to go pretty far back: 10 million years. That was when some curious primate stumbled across a rotting piece of fruit and thought, “Why not?” And boom, drinking was born.
That’s at least how a new theory published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes it. The consumption of alcohol, which otherwise wouldn’t have been palatable and might have been poisonous, was an evolutionary boon when our ancestors descended from the trees and started looking for food.
“Evolutionary biologists such as myself study so much peculiar and fascinating examples of organisms adapting to their environment, there is a cliche in our field: ‘Life will find a way,’” lead author Matthew Carrigan wrote in an e-mail to The Washington Post. “So when I began this research, I thought, ‘If ethanol is present in naturally fermenting fruit, why shouldn’t some frugivores adapt the molecular machinery to digest it?”
At the center of this molecular machinery is an enzyme called ADH4. This is a very important enzyme: first, because it’s found in a primate’s throat, stomach, and tongue; and second, because it is the first enzyme that can metabolize alcohol, including ethanol and other alcohols found in plants. So Carrigan and other researchers went about the task of analyzing ADH4?s evolutionary history by resurrecting ancient enzymes, believing it would tell them when such consumption began.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/12/05/scientists-reveal-the-ancient-origins-of-drinking-alcohol/?postshare=6901417785693649
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Drunk animals are hilarious! 
People Alcoholism sucks, though.
