Monday, April 24, 2017

Asparagus Pee? Why Only Some People Smell It


In this article, was discussed the smell of urine once someone has eaten asparagus. This research began when Lorelei Mucci, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and her colleagues went to a conference and at dinner had asparagus. When the discussion of how asparagus gives an odor to urine it came to their surprise that Scandinavian and Ireland colleagues had no idea what smell they were referring to. This phenomena sparked the 2010 study of how there are 800 new reasons why this phenomena might happen. During the experiment over 6,900 people's genes were analyzed and found that 871 new genetic variants was linked with the inability to detect the odor. The study is still be undergone in determining what genes might influence this inability.
I found this article interesting because being an asparagus consumer I have always been able to detect the odor of when someone or myself has eaten asparagus. I did not think that there would be genes that would cause individuals to not be able to detect this odor, as I was under the assumption that everyone could. I think once the study is over and they are able to detect what genes code for this phenomena, I wonder if there are any other scents that it might influence.

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting and backs up some of what was discussed in class.

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