Feynman’s Flower

Szechuan Peppercorns, for toothaches or for fun!

Eating Szechuan peppercorns has to be one of the strangest culinary experiences I’ve had. If you haven’t grabbed a few of the reddish pods, crunched them between your teeth, and let them sit on your tongue for a few minutes, go get some and do it now.

While your experience may differ, mine (and the typical experience) goes something like this. In a few seconds, your tongue numbs, then you taste pepper, then lemon, and then you experience a cool-and-hot sensation. Lastly, after maybe a minute, you feel a very strange buzzing sensation on your tongue.

“There’s a war in my mouth,” I told Diana Bautista, the UC Berkeley professor I was interviewing.

Bautista’s work is so cool. She identified the first family of touch receptors through studying the Szechuan peppercorns. Why these? Well, pain receptors were discovered through chili peppers, and then others identified through wasabi and mint and some other very wonderful plants. So spices and medicinal plants that people have noticed affect our senses and bodies are a good place to start.

Baustista’s work has many applications, like alleviating chronic pain, for example, but I would - for now - rather focus on sensation. My question - what the hell is going on that a receptor sensing heat (or cold or touch) can be triggered by a molecule that a plant makes?

A heat receptor that signals through a structural change when hot is elegant and simple, probably pretty ancient. Probably more recent are (endogenous, made by the body) molecules that can trigger the receptor to undergo the same change when it isn’t hot. Such a shortcut to tap into an already existing pathway is brilliant! Then the plants come along and make molecules that are similar enough to the endogenous molecules to trigger an unpleasant response in mammals, which don’t particularly want their mouths to feel they are burning, as protection. But humans - so often an exception - are willing to acquire the taste, for the pleasant endorphin response to the crying pain receptors.

This topic is just waiting for an artist! These are the most sensual molecules and pathways - by definition. And people do love their plant-based pain and touch receptor triggers. Capsaicin from chili peppers, menthol from mint, garlic, wasabi: there are fanatics for each of these. (And I may be an example of a fan of them all!)

Note to self - a chart to flesh out:
trpa1 receptor - wasabi (pungent isothiocyanade compounds), garlic (pungent thiosulfanates), and cannabinoids
trpm8 - mint (menthol)
trpv1 - chili peppers (capsaicin)

Links:
Diana Bautista research sumary
Nature Neuroscience paper on Szechuan peppercorns
David Julius discovered the capsaicin receptor and much more

Some people believe that learning science takes away one’s wonder of the world. They fear that science reduces Nature’s beauty into ugly clockwork. I believe that science helps uncover the beauty of Nature. Richard Feynman, physicist and communicator agreed with me:

“I have a friend who’s an artist and he’s sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very
well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, ‘Look how beautiful it is,’ and I’ll agree, I think. And he
says, ‘You see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you, as a scientist, you take
this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.

And I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other
people and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is.
But I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the
flower that he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also
have a beauty….

Also, the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to
pollinate it is interesting - it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: Does
this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting
questions which shows that a scientific knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery
and the awe of a flower. It only adds; I don’t understand how it can subtract.”

So, that’s where Feynman’s Flower comes from. This blog will reflect my interests: art that communicates the the beauty of Nature we discover through science, my work towards communicating science through creative means, and science discoveries in the realms of molecules, microbiology, and physics that are too good not to share.