Coming up roses in scent research.Perfumers struggle to make every bottle of scent smell just as rosy as the last. After a struggle of their own, scientists have now discovered an important clue to the way nature makes the chemicals that give rose oil--an ingredient in many perfumes--its sweet smell. Chemists suspected that roses make some of their major scent chemicals by breaking down carotenoids 1. any of a group of red, orange, or yellow pigmented polyisoprenoid hydrocarbons synthesized by prokaryotes and higher plants and concentrating in animal fat when eaten; examples are ß-carotene, lycopene, and xanthophyll. 2. marked by yellow color. provitamin A carotenoids , the compounds in petals petal, one of the four basic parts of a flower, next innermost organ from the sepal. The whorl of petals is known collectively as the corolla [Lat.,=little crown]. The number of petals is usually constant within groups (e.g., five in the rose family), as are the numbers of the other organs. that give red roses their hue. However, scientists had never caught the flowers in the act. Researchers in Japan have now found evidence of a carotenoid-processing enzyme in rose petals. Aroma chemist Naoharu Watanabe of Shizuoka Shizuoka (shĭz  `ôkä), city (1990 pop. 472,196), capital of Shizuoka prefecture, E central Honshu, Japan, on Suruga Bay. It is a port and communications center and is known for its green tea, oranges, and lacquer ware. University presented the findings. The researchers crushed 10 kilograms of Bulgarian rose petals for tests that found evidence of enzyme activity that turns carotenoids into chemical precursors of beta-damascenone, a scent compound in rose oil. Scientists would like to purify Purify - A debugging tool from Pure Software. the enzymes that produce pure floral notes because chemists have a hard time duplicating them in the lab, says Watanabe. Although the chemists have found the petals' enzyme activity, no one has succeeded in purifying the enzyme, says Peter Fleischmann, Watanabe's colleague at Shizuoka University. Fleischmann has narrowed the search to four or five proteins that break down carotenoids in quince quince, shrub or small tree of the Asian genera Chaenomeles and Cydonia of the family Rosaceae (rose family). The common quince (Cydonia oblonga) is a spineless tree with edible fruits cultivated from ancient times in Asia and in the Mediterranean area, where it was early naturalized. and starfruit, he said in a separate presentation. The scientists hope to have the long-sought enzyme in hand soon. "It's quite promising," says Fleischmann. |
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