Following our human practice investigation, we challenged ourselves to tackle the specific requirements, of both the consumers and the industry. We designed our research around the three prominent issues we learned about - Brett, Resveratrol, sugar content and ethanol levels.

Our first mission - “Fighting the bad yeast”. We scoured professional literature regarding Brettanomyces bruxellensis : who’s the enemy? what are his weaknesses? how can we defeat him, using synthetic biology?

Our second mission was to lower the sugar content of the wine, without sacrificing its quality.

The interest in Miraculin stems from a personal story of one of our team members. Yaara encountered the Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) plant more than ten years ago, when her brother sent her the exotic seeds from a farm he was living at, in Australia. She was instantly fascinated by a plant that alters your perception of taste and all the possible applications of this concept. This train of thought led her to study food science at Tel Hai, a college that prides itself in its food science department and research facilities.

Third, Resveratrol. We learned from the people we interviewed, wine consumers and health conscious to boot, that a healthier wine is a much desired product. A topic that has gained vast interest in the last few years is antioxidants. It is now widely recognized as beneficial to consume food products with a high antioxidant content. One such antioxidant is Resveratrol. The metabolic process of Resveratrol production is as follows:

“Properties and molecular mechanisms of resveratrol: a review”

Regarding lowering ethanol levels in wine, it became clear almost immediately that the glycerol pathway holds the key. Numerous studies showed that by converting the metabolic pathway away from ethanol production and towards glycerol, you have wine that’s less alcoholic, but is unmarred by unwanted characteristics, as opposed to other unwanted metabolites such.