Boffins hunch over steaming cups of coffee to find HIDDEN SECRETS of caffeine

A crack team of international researchers have revealed the freshly sequenced genome of the coffee plant and, as a result, unearthed interesting findings about the kick ass chemical caffeine.

Scientists found that coffee developed caffeine-linked genes independently of any common ancestor, such as chocolate and tea.

The boffins pored over "a high-quality draft" of the genome of Coffee canephora, which - we're told - accounts for roughly 30 per cent of the globe's coffee production.

They were able to find special qualities in the plant that were distinct from the genetic make-up of other species such as the grape and tomato.

The researchers said that coffee "harbours larger families of genes that relate to the production of alkaloid and flavonoid compounds," which in turn accounts for the strong, heady aroma of a cup of joe. It also explains the bitterness of the beans.

Lots more caffeine-making enzymes are packed into coffee compared with other plants, the boffins said. It carries an "expanded collection of N-methyltransferases" apparently.

But coffee's caffeine enzymes have bigger links with other genes found in the coffee plant compared with those caffeine enzymes commonly found in tea and chocolate.

Researchers were able to conclude that coffee appeared to have independently produced caffeine due to the marked difference in enzymes uncovered in the genome sequence.

Victor Albert, professor of biological sciences at the University at Buffalo, said:

The coffee genome helps us understand what's exciting about coffee — other than that it wakes me up in the morning.

By looking at which families of genes expanded in the plant, and the relationship between the genome structure of coffee and other species, we were able to learn about coffee's independent pathway in evolution, including — excitingly — the story of caffeine.

Albert co-authored the paper along with researcher Philippe Lashermes and genome scientists Patrick Wincker and France Denoeud.

But the study, published in the Science journal on Friday, was an international effort with researchers from France being joined by colleagues in the US, Italy, Canada, Germany, China, Spain, Indonesia, Brazil, Australia and India.

Vulture Weekend imagines that many large cups of coffee were gulped down during the making of this project.

But coffee isn't just there for us humans to use as a morning pick-me-up. The scientists mulled over why it was that the caffeine chemical was so important in nature.

One of the theories suggests that caffeine may help plants repel insects, while other studies have suggested that - just like us humans - bugs can also find the chemical a hard habit to kick.

"It turns out that, over evolutionary time, the coffee genome wasn't triplicated as in its relatives: the tomato and chilli pepper," Wincker said. "Instead it maintained a structure similar to the grape's. As such, evolutionary diversification of the coffee genome was likely more driven by duplications in particular gene families as opposed to en masse, when all genes in the genome duplicate."

Coffee, then, is a special agricultural commodity on planet Earth where more than 2.25 billion cups of the stuff are said to be consumed daily worldwide.

Seems it's time to put the kettle on for another cup of joe. ®