HARROW: Researchers have identified an enzyme that plays a key role in producing roses’ sweet fragrances – a development that overturns the commonly held belief in the scientific community that terpene synthases are the sole route to the production of fragrant monoterpenes in plants
Dubbed RhNUDX1, the enzyme was discovered when researchers were investigating the genes of two rose cultivars looking for any possible mechanism that may be responsible for the scent.
Jean-Louis Magnard and colleagues discovered that the flowers’ fragrances were facilitated by a completely unexpected family of enzymes. Specifically, the researchers compared the transcriptomes of the Papa Meilland cultivar, which smells very strongly, and the Rogue Meilland cultivar, which produces very little scent, to flesh out their genetic differences.
They found that the RhNUDX1 enzyme, which acts in the cytoplasm of cells located in the flowers’ petals, generates the fragrant and well-known monoterpene geraniol, the primary part of rose oil.
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