Why Does Asparagus Make Your Pee Smell Funny?

Ah, the aromas of spring.

The clean scent of freshly
mown grass. The sweet
fragrance of lilacs in bloom.
But what's causing that
sulfurous smell from your
urine after eating one of the
season's
earliest
vegetables? It's asparagus,
of course. Just what is it that
gives "asparagus pee" that
pungent smell?
My urine after I eat asparagus smells like vegetable soup, maybe even a cabbage
soup, said Danielle Reed, associate director of the Monell Chemical Senses
Center, in Philadelphia, and an author on a 2011 study in the journal Chemical
Senses on how people produce and detect those characteristic asparagus-pee
odors. Benjamin Franklin commented,"a few stems of asparagus will give our urine
a disagreeable odor".
What's that smell?
The asparagus smell is thought to result from the metabolism of asparagusic acid,
found in asparagus, into other sulfur-containing compounds, such as methanethiol,
the most prominent odorant identified in asparagus pee, along with many others.
These chemicals tend to be volatile they evaporate easily which brings them
to our noses.
"I think that some of the proteins and amino acids in asparagus are metabolized
differently by different people, and so people have a different sulfur volatile profile",
Reed said.

Sources of variation
Anecdotally, the story goes that people differ in whether or not they detect the
asparagus smell. As "Dr. Steve" wrote in Men's Fitness, "Not everyone can smell
the urinary byproducts of asparagus; those who can smell them assume everyone
else can too, and those who can't smell them think those who can are crazy."
In fact, as Reed and colleagues realized, the ability to sniff an odor in one's own
pee depends on both the sense of smell and the ability to produce the odor in the
first place. If someone doesn't notice the asparagus smell, you can't know offhand
whether that's because they don't produce it, or they fail to smell it, or both. The
scientific literature, too, varies a lot in its estimates of the sources and magnitude of
variation in people's ability to smell asparagus pee: Thirty-three and 50 percent of
people fail to perceive the asparagus-pee odor, according to two past studies with
American populations. In contrast, studies with Israeli and Chinese populations
found that almost everyone can, according to Reed and her colleagues. Data from
previous studies also showed varying results about the proportion of people
who produce the odor, according to Reed's 2011 paper.
Could the variation be genetic?
A 2010 study run by the DNA-sequencing company 23andMe, which was
published in the journal PLOS Genetics, identified a genetic component of the
ability to smell asparagus pee: a tiny stretch of DNA that often differed between
people who said they either noticed a "peculiar odor" when they peed after eating
the veggie or they did not. Sex chromosomes aside, we all have two copies of
each chromosome and therefore of each gene. People whose DNA sequences had
a "G" on both chromosomes at a specific location (had genotype "G/G") were less
often able to detect the smell in their urine than those whose DNA read "G" on one
chromosome and "A" on the other (genotype "G/A"), or "A" on both chromosomes
(genotype "A/A").
The site of variation, located on Chromosome 1 and known as rs4481887, is near
genes for several different olfactory receptors, and researchers aren't exactly sure
which receptor it may affect, the authors wrote. Yet that genomic study did not
reveal whether the gene variants influenced odor production, detection, or both.

Researchers investigate
To find out, Monell Institute researchers designed their 2011 study to distinguish
between the two abilities. Study participants gave urine samples both before and
after eating asparagus. Next, they were asked to smell several pairs of urine
samples, one collected post-asparagus eating, one collected pre-asparagus or
after eating bread, and asked to identify the one that smelled of asparagus. The
researchers also sequenced participants' DNA at rs4481887.
The results? "We were surprised to learn that some people don't produce the odor,
and so that was a new finding. We knew that some people were unable to smell it,
but we learned that some people were unable to produce it", Reed said.
Specifically, 8 percent of subjects failed to produce the odor; and 6 percent of
participants failed to detect it. The two abilities, smell production and odor
detection, were not tightly linked, the researchers found.
The 2011 study also found that the Chromosome 1 gene variant was associated
with the ability to smell the odor, but not the ability to produce it. According to the
study, about 75 percent of people with genotype "G/G," were able to detect the
asparagus smell, whereas about 90 percent of those with "G/A" or "A/A" genotypes
could pick it up.
"The odorant receptor doesn't explain the entire perception of the volatiles of
asparagus urine, but it definitely explains part of the acuity that people have",Reed
said.
Someone asked Redd if he thought it was important to know the differences?
Differences in abilities to metabolize proteins in asparagus might relate to other,
more consequential, health issues, Reed said.

Green color: Indirect Speech

Yellow color: Direct Speech

REFERENCE:
http://www.livescience.com/54437-why-does-asparagus-make-pee-smell.html

DIRECT SPEECH:
My urine after I eat asparagus smells like vegetable soup, maybe even a cabbage
soup, said Danielle Reed.
INDIRECT SPEECH:
Danielle Reed said that his urine after he ate asparagus smelled like vegetable
soup, maybe even a cabbage soup.

DIRECT SPEECH:

Benjamin Franklin commented, "a few stems of asparagus will give our urine a
disagreeable odor".

INDIRECT SPEECH:

Benjamin Franklin commented that a few stems of asparagus would give our urine a
disagreeable odor.

DIRECT SPEECH:

I think that some of the proteins and amino acids in asparagus are metabolized differently
by different people, and so people have a different sulfur volatile profile", Reed said.

INDIRECT SPEECH:

Reed said that he thought that some of the proteins and amino acids in asparagus was
metabolized differently by different people, and so people had a different sulfur volatile
profile.

DIRECT SPEECH:

"We were surprised to learn that some people don't produce the odor, and so that was a
new finding. We knew that some people were unable to smell it, but we learned that some
people were unable to produce it", Reed said.

INDIRECT SPEECH:

Reed said that they had been surprised to learn that some people didnt produce the odor,
and that had been a new finding. They had known that some people had been unable to
smell it, but they had learned that some people had been unable to produce it.

DIRECT SPEECH:

"The odorant receptor doesn't explain the entire perception of the volatiles of asparagus
urine, but it definitely explains part of the acuity that people have, Reed said.

INDIRECT SPEECH:

Reed said that the odorant receptor didnt explain the entire perception of the volatiles of
asparagus urine, but it definitely explains part of the acuity that people have.

INDIRECT SPEECH:

Someone asked Redd if he thought it was important to know the differences?

DIRECT SPEECH:
Someone asked, Do you think it is important to know the differences.

DIRECT SPEECH:

Differences in abilities to metabolize proteins in asparagus might relate to other, more

consequential, health issues, Reed said.

INDIRECT SPEECH:

Reed said that Differences in abilities to metabolize proteins in asparagus might relate to
other, more consequential, health issues.

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