Amaropostia stiptica, a.k.a. the bitter bracket fungus, isn’t toxic, but it tastes like it could kill you! Scientists have discovered that it contains a substance so bitter that even the tiniest amount triggers your bitter taste receptors.
As its name suggests, the bitter bracket is a bitter, inedible fungus, but the research team from the Leibniz Institutes of Food Systems Biology and Plant Biochemistry in Germany didn’t expect to discover the world’s most bitter compound while analyzing it. This mushroom grows attached to trees in secluded forests throughout Europe, Asia, and North America, but because it is not very noticeable, it is often overlooked. However, it recently attracted a lot of attention from the scientific community because of a compound called oligopolyn D, which scientists claim is a clear contender for the title of the most bitter substance in the world.
Photo: James Lindsey/Wikimedia Commons
While analyzing Amaropostia stiptica, scientists discovered three new compounds – oligoporins D, E, and F – known as triterpene glycosides. Of them, oligoporin D turned out to be the most fascinating, due to its extreme bitterness. Even a very small amount of this substance strongly stimulates “TAS2R46,” one of the bitter taste receptors in humans.
According to a research paper published in the American Chemical Society’s journal, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, in an experiment conducted by scientistsat the Leibniz Institutes of Food Systems Biology and Plant Biochemistry, oligopolyn D was so potent that even when 1 gram of it was dissolved in 16,000 liters of water, it still tasted bitter.
The bitter bracket is inedible, so who cares about its extreme bitterness? Well, the scientific community has a fairly low understanding of what causes bitterness and why certain things are bitter, and others aren’t. For example, this mushroom challenges one of the most prominent theories about bitterness – that its intensity is on par with the toxicity of a substance. Amaropostia stiptica is not poisonous, it just tastes like it could probably kill you.
“In fact, some of the most bitter mushrooms, such as the bitter bolete (Tylopilus felleus) are not poisonous, whereas the taste of the deadly death cap (Amanita phalloides) is described as pleasant and nutty,” researchers noted.
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