People fond of saying, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy” may now have a glimmer of hope for one day lowering their dependence on alcohol with a new approach. While the pharmaceutical potential of a new research finding is not known, authors speculate that their work paves the way for further development.

Researchers at the University of Texas report this week in the Journal of Neuroscience that single amino acid change in an important brain protein protects against drunkenness. The scientists designed a mutated gene that encodes for the human BK channel, or “Big Potassium” channel, and placed it into a model organism called Caenorhabditis elegans. The nematode worm model is very popular among laboratory-based molecular biologists and geneticists.

Once the C. elegans worms had the mutated human BK channel instead of their own version of the crucial protein, they could tolerate alcohol exposure without showing signs of intoxication. Meanwhile, worms having only normal BK channels responded to alcohol with slower movements and inhibited egg-laying, among other intoxication indicators.

“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 statement. Pierce-Shimomura is an assistant professor in the university’s College of Natural Sciences and Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research.

A profound aspect of this research is that the mutated BK channels function exactly like their unaltered counterparts except in their response to alcohol.

“We got pretty lucky and found a way to make the channel insensitive to alcohol without affecting its normal function,” said Pierce-Shimomura.

The BK channel is important in regulation of the activity of neurons, blood vessels, and cells in the respiratory tract and urinary bladder. None of these functions appear to be altered by the mutation engineered by Pierce-Shimomura and colleagues.

“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.”