La Rotonde was even a muse for many works of art by the artists who frequented this café. Back when many artists whose names are known around the world were just starting out and just (some literally) starving artists, their work was showcased at this historic café. The Montparnasse area was a haven for bohemians from around the globe and it was this café in particular that Hemingway immortalized in his novel, the Sun Also Rises. Located at 105, Boulevard Montparnasse, this café was a favorite of Ernest Hemingway. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon Beauvoir also visited here along with Zhou Enlai, the first Premier of China, and Romanian thinkers like Emil Cioran and Eugene Ionesco. Café de Flore has seen its fair share of incredible people enter its doors both from France and abroad. Located at 172 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Café de Flore is also named after a statue, the Roman goddess of flowers and spring, Flora, who can be found on the opposite side of the boulevard from the café. This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on September 4, 2014.Les Deux Magots’ rival, located in close proximity on the same boulevard, is another one of the oldest and most famous cafes in Paris. “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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