The smell of fresh durian is already awful to some people. Now imagine a rotting durian.
On Saturday (28 Apr), 500 teachers and students evacuated from a university in Australia because of a pungent stench that was originally thought as a gas leak.
Firefighters went down to the building at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) university campus library in full gear, with breathing apparatus, to investigate the source of the smell.
No risks were taken because the building was known to store potentially dangerous chemicals.
The firefighters later found out that the awful smell was actually the gas from the durian. It has been left rotting in a cupboard.
The smell had reportedly travelled through the building via the air conditioning system.
In case you’re curious what causes the pungent smell of durian, a local research revealed that durian has a gene named “methionine gamma lyases (MGL)”.
This gene regulates odour compounds named “volatile sulphur compounds (VSC)” that can smell like rotten eggs or onion.
Some plants have one or two MGL copies but durians have four of such genes.
Photo credit: BBC
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