🍺 Chimps are functional alcoholics and science finally has receipts

Remember when your biology professor said humans evolved a taste for alcohol because our primate ancestors ate fermented fruit? Turns out that wasn't just a fun theory to justify happy hour. Wild chimps are downing the equivalent of one alcoholic drink daily from naturally fermented fruits, and they've been doing it for millions of years. Meanwhile, a Texas startup is making horses that glow green (as one does), brain-computer interfaces are getting an Apple makeover, someone finally solved the crying-while-chopping-onions problem, and a New Mexico company thinks your blood knows you have Alzheimer's before your brain does. Science is getting weird again.

RESEARCH

Researchers at UC Berkeley just published the first quantitative proof that wild chimpanzees are basically operating at a perpetual light buzz. We're talking 14 grams of pure ethanol daily, which is exactly one standard US drink. Though let's be honest, when you account for body mass (chimps average 40kg vs. our 70kg), they're functionally consuming about two drinks a day. Every day. For their entire adult lives.

PhD candidate Aleksey Maro and Professor Robert Dudley spent years analyzing 500+ fruit samples from 21 different species at research sites in Uganda and Côte d'Ivoire. The fruits averaged 0.26% alcohol by weight, with some figs hitting 0.41%. Wild yeasts metabolize the natural sugars in ripe fruits, and since fruits make up 75% of a chimp's diet and they eat about 4.5 kilograms daily, the math adds up fast.

This isn't chimps raiding a bar. This is evolution working exactly as predicted by the "Drunken Monkey Hypothesis," which suggests that our ability to metabolize alcohol stems from a genetic mutation 10 million years ago that helped our ancestors locate calorie-rich fermenting fruit. Apparently, getting buzzed off overripe fruit was an evolutionary advantage, which feels like the universe's way of justifying brunch mimosas.

What’s the implication here? Humans didn't develop a taste for alcohol because of agriculture or social drinking. We inherited it from tree-dwelling ancestors who evolved to seek out the good stuff. Your next hangover is technically millions of years in the making, so you know who to blame.

NEWS

Josie Zayner (yes, the biohacker who injected themselves with CRISPR on a livestream in 2017) just announced that their company Embryo Corporation edited horse embryos at the zygote stage for the first time. They inserted the green fluorescent protein gene from jellyfish directly into fertilized horse eggs, creating embryos that glow green under UV light. Because apparently, science needed glow-in-the-dark horses.

The "first ever" claim requires some nuance. Argentine researchers published CRISPR-edited horse embryos back in 2020, but they used somatic cell nuclear transfer (editing cells first, then cloning). Embryo Corporation's approach edits at conception itself, which is technically different and arguably more direct. They're targeting the MC1R gene, which controls coat color, and claim this proof-of-concept opens the door to eliminating genetic diseases in horses.

The company also announced plans for hypoallergenic cats by knocking out the Fel d 1 allergen gene (though Korean researchers already accomplished this in February 2024, achieving a 98.6% reduction in the protein that makes 95% of cat-allergic people miserable). The regulatory landscape is murky at best. The FDA has authority over gene-edited animals, treating them as "new animal drugs," but enforcement has been selective.

This is where biotech gets interesting and uncomfortable simultaneously. We've got the technology to eliminate genetic diseases, create hypoallergenic pets, and yes, make horses glow green for literally no reason other than we can. The question isn't whether it's possible anymore - clearly it is. The question is what we're going to do with that capability now that it's available to a venture-backed startup in Texas run by someone who once sold DIY CRISPR kits online.

NEWS

Cognixion recently launched a clinical trial combining brain-computer interfaces with Apple's Vision Pro headset to help paralyzed patients communicate. The setup uses six EEG sensors integrated into a custom headband that replaces the Vision Pro's standard strap, letting patients control the interface through brain signals, eye tracking, and head movements. Up to 20 people with ALS, spinal cord injuries, stroke, or traumatic brain injuries will test the system through April 2026.

The tech reads electrical activity from your brain at 2,000 samples per second, processes it through algorithms that detect what you're trying to say, and uses Apple's existing accessibility features (not the new BCI protocol everyone's talking about - that's Synchron's territory) to generate speech. Think of it as turning your thoughts into text without typing, except it's real and happening now.

Let’s connect some dots: Apple filed a patent in 2023 for AirPods with up to 22 electrodes per earpiece that could detect brain activity. They've also developed AR glasses prototypes similar to Meta's. Cognixion's approach proves the market for accessible BCI technology while Apple quietly builds the infrastructure to make brain-reading devices as common as earbuds.

The competitive landscape is getting pretty crazy (we know we have written a lot about this). Neuralink requires brain surgery for 1,000+ implanted electrodes. Synchron threads a device through your jugular vein. Cognixion just needs you to wear a headband. The resolution isn't as precise as invasive methods, but you also don't need a neurosurgeon.

The funding tells where the story is going for now. $25-28 million raised suggests investors believe non-invasive BCIs could reach millions of people who'd never consider brain surgery. And if Apple's building the platform? We're maybe five years from checking email with our thoughts while wearing their rumoured AR glasses. The future keeps arriving whether we're ready or not.

NEWS

Sunions are real, they work, and they've been quietly spreading across grocery stores since 2018 with zero genetic engineering involved. Just three decades of patient, traditional breeding to create an onion that gets sweeter and milder as it ages instead of turning you into a sobbing mess at the cutting board.

The science is pretty clever here. Normal onions produce syn-propanethial-S-oxide, the volatile compound that attacks your eyes. The process starts when you cut into an onion and damage its cells, releasing alliinase enzymes that convert sulfur-containing amino acids into sulfenic acids. Then lachrymatory factor synthase (LFS), basically the enzyme specifically designed to ruin your day, converts those sulfenic acids into the tear gas. Sunions still produce these compounds, but at much lower levels that decrease over time in storage.

Here's a twist for you, though: Scientists in New Zealand solved this completely in 2008 using RNAi to silence the LFS gene directly, achieving up to a 1,544-fold reduction in lachrymatory synthase activity. Their onions were perfect. They never left the lab because RNAi makes them GMOs, requiring years of regulatory approval and facing massive consumer resistance. The researchers couldn't even legally taste their own creation.

So we got Sunions instead: same result, 30 years of traditional breeding, zero GMO controversy. Originally developed by Bayer (BASF acquired them in 2018), they launched in the US and are now spreading through Canada, Spain, and UK retailers like Waitrose. The regulatory path of least resistance wins again, though you have to wonder how many other brilliant solutions are collecting dust in labs because "GMO" became a scarier label than "three decades of selective breeding."

NEWS

Circular Genomics just closed a $15 million Series A to commercialize blood tests that detect Alzheimer's disease by measuring circular RNAs - a type of RNA molecule that forms closed loops and is particularly abundant in brain tissue. The Albuquerque-founded company (now in San Diego) argues these molecules could catch Alzheimer's years before symptoms appear, using nothing more invasive than a blood draw.

Circular RNAs are having a moment. Unlike linear RNA, they're remarkably stable because they lack the vulnerable 5' and 3' ends that degrading enzymes typically attack. They're brain-enriched, cross the blood-brain barrier, and reflect dynamic biological processes rather than static genetics. The company's platform measures multiple pathways simultaneously: neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, synaptic dysfunction, amyloid and tau pathology. Like this, it could potentially offer a more comprehensive picture than single-biomarker tests.

The competitive landscape is already getting pretty crowded, though. C2N Diagnostics' PrecivityAD test (measuring p-tau217 and amyloid ratio) hits 88-95% accuracy and has already been submitted for FDA review. Amyloid PET scans remain the gold standard but cost $3,000-6,000. Circular Genomics already launched a depression test in 2024 and presented Alzheimer's data at the CTAD conference in December 2025.

Led by Mountain Group Partners with participation from the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation, the funding brings the company's total to roughly $29 million. They've recruited heavy hitters, including Michael Weiner (Principal Investigator of ADNI, the largest Alzheimer's study globally), to their scientific advisory board.

The promise: catching Alzheimer's when it's still treatable instead of after irreversible damage. The challenge: proving circular RNAs are specific enough to distinguish Alzheimer's from normal ageing and other dementias. If they pull it off, we're looking at accessible early detection that could actually make new Alzheimer's drugs useful. If not, it's another promising biomarker that couldn't quite deliver.

So there you have it, once again. Chimps have been functional alcoholics for 10 million years, horses might start glowing in the dark, you can think your way through an Apple headset, onions finally stopped making you cry (but only after we gave up on the GMO version that worked perfectly), and your blood might know you have Alzheimer's before you do. Just another week in biotech where evolution justifies day drinking and someone decided jellyfish genes belong in horses.

What are we laughing at, though? The crying onions took 30 years of traditional breeding (if we’re not accounting for the hundreds of years before that), while the glowing horse embryos happened in a Texas lab this year. Progress is weird.

Got thoughts on whether designer pets are inevitable or inadvisable? Wondering if the chimps are happier than us? Think brain-reading AirPods sound dystopian or convenient? We actually read every response while contemplating our own evolutionary relationship with fermented fruit.

Forward this to someone who needs to know that science is getting wonderfully strange again. We appreciate you sticking around, which suggests you’re as delightfully weird about biotech as we are.

Keep questioning everything (especially your next drink), Prateek & Jere

P.S. If you're buying Sunions this week, remember someone spent three decades breeding those so you wouldn't have to cry at the cutting board while scientists in New Zealand have a perfectly good GMO version they're not allowed to share. Science is complicated; onions are now simple.