With the smell of rotten meat, it is unlikely that the flowers of some wild ginger are used in the wedding bouquet-although they do not resist the loving flies. Researchers now say they have come to how sulfur smell is produced.
Scientists say the smell is due to small changes in an enzyme that prevents bad breathing in humans.
Dr. Yudai Okoyama, the first author of the first author, told the first author, told Research From the National Museum of Nature and Science in Japan.
The writing in the magazine of Science and Okuyama and its colleagues reported how they first investigated the origins of a major chemical known that it was behind the sulfur smell produced by some species. AsarumOr wild ginger.
It is believed that this chemical, which is called DMDS, is produced from a substance called methanithul. It is known that methanithul causes a breath in humans and is formed in plants and animals where mitonin is broken amino acids.
The researchers confirmed this by feeding a form of methionine called carbon 13 carbon atoms for a type of wild ginger, A. FudsinoiAnd I also found the released DMDS containing carbon 13.
Then the team looked at a group of different types of Asarum To determine the genes whose activity varied with the amount of DMDS produced.
The work determined the gene that leads to a binding protein with selenium. Such proteins are found throughout the vegetarian and animal kingdom, and it usually converts methanithol into less harmful substances. In humans, this mechanism prevents fall.
The researchers found that the “regular” version of this gene was present in all the plants and animals in which they looked, including the different types of Asarum. However, they found that the latter also had a mutated shape of the gene that produces a protein that converts methanithol into DMDS. This transformed gene is more active in the bad -smelling species.
The team said that the change in the job seemed to return to a small number of mutations in the gene, with only two or three changes in the amino acids of the protein needed for the transformation.
Show more work Urea and SymplocarPus Plants also contain selenium -related proteins that can convert methanehol into DMDS, explaining why the smell of some types is bad, as the team indicated that they have evolved independently.
However, not all plants with unpleasant smell produce the same way: the team found types of Amorphophallus A group that includes a plant known as the “corpse flower”-a binding protein that converts methandol into DMDS.
“We believe that some of the similar enzymes that belong[s] “A different protein family may be responsible for the move,” Okoyama said.
