Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi brain Stuff. I'm Lauren vogel Baum, and this this is a classic brain Stuff episode. This one is about Daurian, a fruit prized for its sweet, creamy taste and sometimes villainized for its stinky smell. But what causes that smell and could that or something else in its jeans help find a cure to something like cancer? Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum. Here in Southeast Asia, the Durian is called the king of fruits, but not everybody in the world bows down to this bulbous, spiny, custardy delicacy. That's usually because of the odor. The smell of a ripe daurian has been compared to sweaty socks, road kill, custard, rotten eggs, garlic, cheese, a gas leak, and a sewer full of rotting pineapples.
And it's strong enough that in places where it grows, many businesses and public areas have to graphics signs up no Durian, like no smoking, but with a spiny ball
in the place of the cigarette. But still the fruit has its super fans, and now some of those super fans from the National Cancer Center Singapore and Duke and US Medical School, along with some financial donors who love Durians enough too privately fund to study about them, have completely mapped the Dairyan genome to find out, among other things,
why the putrid stench durians. In the study published in the journal Nature Genetics, the researchers sequenced the genome of a popular and prized Durian variety called Mussang King and found its genome is made up of around forty six thousand genes, just about double the number of genes that composed the human genome. They found the plant is closely related to both cotton and cacao. That's right, the plant
that gives us chocolate. But the researchers were really interested in the source of the smell, so in snooping around the genome for odor producing compounds, they found a class of genes called mg l S that s methionin gamma liaises in the leaves, roots, and fruits of Daurian plants. The researchers found that these genes regulate the synthesis of odor producing volatile sulfur compounds or vs cs, you know,
like rotten egg smell. They also discovered that in the ripe fruit, the expression of one of these vcs expressing genes is about two thousand times stronger than in other parts of the plant in the wild. This aspect may be responsible for attracting seed dispersing animals like elephants and bats to the Daurian fruit. This isn't the first research
conducted on the Durian's unique scent. In a team of German researchers identified dozens of chemical compounds that combine to create the smell, but that research did not investigate the genes behind those compounds. The current research team was hoping to make an important medical discovery with the sequencing of
the mussang king genome. After all, anticancer drugs like taxol derived from the bark of the Pacific u save lives every day, and as biodiversity deep creases all over the world, we need to figure out what we have while it's still around. But as Durian enthusiasts, these scientists also just wanted to investigate how this quirky and controversial plant might be conserved. Besides Mussang King, there are around thirty other species of Durian, both edible and inedible. In the Southeast
Asian forests, and some of them are endangered. In a press release, co lead author Dr t Ben Tian, Deputy Director of the National Cancer Center Singapore, wrote, many of these other Daian species are in this part of the world, and sadly some are endangered due to the increasing loss of biodiversity. DNA sequencing is thus an important tool to protect the precious information contained in these fascinating and important plants.
To Day's episode is based on the article cancer Scientists sniff out the genes behind Daurian's famous stink on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Jesslin Shields. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Playing. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H