Scientists discover nature’s most powerful bitter compound in forest mushrooms

Scientists have discovered powerful bitter compounds in naive bitter bracket mushrooms, which may revolutionize our understanding of taste perception, which may lead to advances in food science, medicine, and evolutionary biology.

The team isolated three previously unknown compounds from inedible but non-toxic bitter mushrooms (Amaropostia striptica), one of the substances was found to be one of the most powerful bitter compounds ever found in nature.

Over the years, scientists who study bitter taste have focused almost entirely on the compounds of flowering plants, which has created a big gap in our understanding of how taste receptors develop to detect potentially harmful substances in all kingdoms in life.

“The vast majority of homologous natural bitter compounds represent metabolites of flowering plants,” the researchers noted in the study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. “Our current knowledge of the bitter chemical space tends toward metabolites of flowering plants and modern synthetic compounds.”

This bias is particularly important because flowering plants developed only about 200 million years ago, while vertebrate bitter taste receptors began to develop in cartilage fish about 500 million years ago.

The newly discovered compounds, called oligonucleoproteins D, E and F, belong to a class of chemicals called triterpenes glycosides. When tested against a full array of 26 human bitter taste receptors, the researchers found that oligopoly protein D activates multiple receptors at low concentrations.

In fact, one of these mushroom compounds triggers a bitter reaction at a concentration of only 100 nanomole – making it as effective as Sinningen, one of the most intense bitter substances known.

This study illuminates an evolutionary puzzle: why not poisonous mushrooms are strongly bitter, while deadly poisonous mushrooms (such as death caps) (Amanita phalloides) What is the “pleasant and nutty” flavor described?

The researchers suggest that the answer may be that humans are not the main consumers of nature. “Many other vertebrates and invertebrates consume them, and their receptors may be adjusted to be isolated from non-toxic mushrooms,” they explained.

Using complex molecular modeling, the team mapped one of these bitter compounds into the binding site of the bitter receptor. Surprisingly, it forms a completely different interaction pattern from other known bitter substances, highlighting the significant versatility of our taste perception system.

The implications of this study are more than just understanding why we reject certain foods. Bitter taste receptors are now known to exist throughout the body (not only on our tongue), and they have various protective functions in both the respiratory and digestive systems.

Dr. Maik Behrens, one of the lead authors of the study, has long advocated expanding our search for bitter compounds outside flowering plants. These findings validate this approach, suggesting that the fungal kingdom has unique molecules that interact with our taste perception in previously unknown ways.

The finding also shows that we have barely scratched the surface in understanding the full bitterness of bitterness in nature. Four of our 26 bitter receptors are still “orphans” – meaning scientists have not yet determined that natural substances have activated them.

The team now expands its investigations to other bitter mushrooms, hoping to fill in the gaps in our understanding of bitterness perception and may discover compounds that can advance medicine, food science, and our understanding of evolution.

This study reminds us that our sense of taste is not developed just to help us enjoy food – it is a complex detection system that protects us from ingesting harmful substances, which continues to remain secret and we are just beginning to disband.