James Bond, Lucille Bluth, and Don Draper are just a few of the iconic characters that could drink any reasonable human under the table. Now, a small roundworm with an artificial mutation has joined their ranks. No matter how many shots these mutant worms down, they will never reach sloppy drunk levels. And that may have huge implications for the treatment of recovering alcoholics in the future.Okay, context time. Researchers based of the University of Texas at Austin were able to implant a "modified human alcohol target" into the roundworm species Caenorhabditis elegans. More specifically, they generated worms with altered versions of the BK channel SLO-1—a membrane protein common to most cell types.The team modified the SLO-1 channel in several ways before they discovered a mutation that prevented the channel from being activated by ethanol. In other tests, the worms had exhibited classic drunk nemotode behavior, such as giving up on egg-laying, wiggling less, and generally behaving in a slovenly manner. But one special batch of mutant worms behaved with total sobriety despite being exposed to the same levels of alcohol.
"This is the first example of altering a human alcohol target to prevent intoxication in an animal," said corresponding author Jon Pierce-Shimomura in a press release. "We got pretty lucky and found a way to make the channel insensitive to alcohol without affecting its normal function."Indeed, the SLO-1 channel isn't just a fast-track to liquor town. It also helps regulate the vascular system, and keeps neurons firing properly. Given alcohol's nuanced and complex effect on the brain, it is impressive that modifying the channels ever so slightly enabled the team to produce alcohol-resistant worms without any other negative side effects.The team published in The Journal of Neuroscience on Tuesday, and the hope is that it will lead to a drug that could help alcoholics cope with symptoms of withdrawal."Our findings provide exciting evidence that future pharmaceuticals might aim at this portion of the alcohol target to prevent problems in alcohol abuse disorders," said Pierce-Shimomura. "However, it remains to be seen which aspects of these disorders would benefit."As promising as the findings sound, it will likely be many years before they will be tested on humans. And as Motherboard's Michael Byrne warned a few weeks back, "off-switches" for addictions may be tantalizing, but they won't necessarily be cure-alls. For now, we'll just have to be satisfied with the fact that the great enterprise of science has gifted the world a bunch of mutant worms that can't get drunk.
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