Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. I'm Lauren vogel Baum, and this this is
Speaker 1: a classic brain Stuff episode. This one is about Daurian,
Speaker 1: a fruit prized for its sweet, creamy taste and sometimes
Speaker 1: villainized for its stinky smell. But what causes that smell
Speaker 1: and could that or something else in its jeans help
Speaker 1: find a cure to something like cancer? Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here in Southeast Asia, the Durian is called
Speaker 1: the king of fruits, but not everybody in the world
Speaker 1: bows down to this bulbous, spiny, custardy delicacy. That's usually
Speaker 1: because of the odor. The smell of a ripe daurian
Speaker 1: has been compared to sweaty socks, road kill, custard, rotten eggs, garlic, cheese,
Speaker 1: a gas leak, and a sewer full of rotting pineapples.
Speaker 1: And it's strong enough that in places where it grows,
Speaker 1: many businesses and public areas have to graphics signs up
Speaker 1: no Durian, like no smoking, but with a spiny ball
Speaker 1: in the place of the cigarette. But still the fruit
Speaker 1: has its super fans, and now some of those super
Speaker 1: fans from the National Cancer Center Singapore and Duke and
Speaker 1: US Medical School, along with some financial donors who love
Speaker 1: Durians enough too privately fund to study about them, have
Speaker 1: completely mapped the Dairyan genome to find out, among other things,
Speaker 1: why the putrid stench durians. In the study published in
Speaker 1: the journal Nature Genetics, the researchers sequenced the genome of
Speaker 1: a popular and prized Durian variety called Mussang King and
Speaker 1: found its genome is made up of around forty six
Speaker 1: thousand genes, just about double the number of genes that
Speaker 1: composed the human genome. They found the plant is closely
Speaker 1: related to both cotton and cacao. That's right, the plant
Speaker 1: that gives us chocolate. But the researchers were really interested
Speaker 1: in the source of the smell, so in snooping around
Speaker 1: the genome for odor producing compounds, they found a class
Speaker 1: of genes called mg l S that s methionin gamma
Speaker 1: liaises in the leaves, roots, and fruits of Daurian plants.
Speaker 1: The researchers found that these genes regulate the synthesis of
Speaker 1: odor producing volatile sulfur compounds or vs cs, you know,
Speaker 1: like rotten egg smell. They also discovered that in the
Speaker 1: ripe fruit, the expression of one of these vcs expressing
Speaker 1: genes is about two thousand times stronger than in other
Speaker 1: parts of the plant in the wild. This aspect may
Speaker 1: be responsible for attracting seed dispersing animals like elephants and
Speaker 1: bats to the Daurian fruit. This isn't the first research
Speaker 1: conducted on the Durian's unique scent. In a team of
Speaker 1: German researchers identified dozens of chemical compounds that combine to
Speaker 1: create the smell, but that research did not investigate the
Speaker 1: genes behind those compounds. The current research team was hoping
Speaker 1: to make an important medical discovery with the sequencing of
Speaker 1: the mussang king genome. After all, anticancer drugs like taxol
Speaker 1: derived from the bark of the Pacific u save lives
Speaker 1: every day, and as biodiversity deep creases all over the world,
Speaker 1: we need to figure out what we have while it's
Speaker 1: still around. But as Durian enthusiasts, these scientists also just
Speaker 1: wanted to investigate how this quirky and controversial plant might
Speaker 1: be conserved. Besides Mussang King, there are around thirty other
Speaker 1: species of Durian, both edible and inedible. In the Southeast
Speaker 1: Asian forests, and some of them are endangered. In a
Speaker 1: press release, co lead author Dr t Ben Tian, Deputy
Speaker 1: Director of the National Cancer Center Singapore, wrote, many of
Speaker 1: these other Daian species are in this part of the world,
Speaker 1: and sadly some are endangered due to the increasing loss
Speaker 1: of biodiversity. DNA sequencing is thus an important tool to
Speaker 1: protect the precious information contained in these fascinating and important plants.
Speaker 1: To Day's episode is based on the article cancer Scientists
Speaker 1: sniff out the genes behind Daurian's famous stink on how
Speaker 1: Stuffworks dot Com, written by Jesslin Shields. Brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Playing. For
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