If one were to eat substances from blandest to nastiest, the bracket fungus, Amaropostia stiptica, would sit at the farthest end of the unpleasant spectrum.
A team of scientists determined just what makes that particular fungus so aggressively distasteful, a group of researchers report in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry. They identified a compound called oligoporin D in the bracket fungus that activates the human bitter taste receptor TAS2R46. The substance is so strong that even barely detectable amounts would probably cause humans to spit it out and desperately search for something to rinse the rancid taste out of their mouths.
The authors report that no human subjects were nauseated by this study. Instead, they grew cells that harbored an assortment of human bitter taste receptors. Think of them as a tongue in a petri dish.
