Scientists have created a way to get rid of the toxic element in alcohol that produce hangovers.

That familiar pounding headache and intense nausea that typically follows a night of alcoholic over-indulgence could finally become a thing of the past.

A professor of microbial genomics at the University of Illinois, Yong-Su Jin, has found a way to change the way yeast reproduces. By altering its DNA, his team can increase the amount of nutritional components in the yeast while at the same time reducing the toxic by-products that cause hangovers.

Jin said: “Fermented foods such as beer, wine and bread are made with polyploid strains of yeast, which means they contain multiple copies of genes in the genome. Until now, it’s been very difficult to do genetic engineering in polyploid strains because if you altered a gene in one copy of the genome, an unaltered copy would correct the one that had been changed.”

He explained that the team were using an enzyme as a “genome knife”, which could be used to slice through all the copies of a gene, and stop automatic corrections happening.

He added that the genome knife could be also used to clone the enzyme that enhances malolactic fermentation – a fermentation process that is important to the character and style of the wine – as “improper malolactic fermentation generates the toxic byproducts that may cause hangover symptoms.”