Quote:
Originally Posted by nostatic
That probably doesn't contribute much to the flavor - that gives the heat. If you modified the molecule you'd likely lose that effect (you can see that with variants like the dihydro).
The biggest target of opportunity is the double bond on the terpenoid end. That gets reduced in dihydro (which is just a bit less heat). The chain length has an effect - an extra carbon atom cuts the heat in half. Easiest would be to oxidize the double bond to an alcohol but I bet you'd lose the heat completely as it wouldn't bind the receptor nearly as well, and would become a lot more water soluble.
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That would be the easiest reaction. Doing that on a cellular level would be the goal - if you could disable the machinery that makes the molecule, you could prevent it from being made in the first place. Since bell peppers don't make the stuff, you have the negative model. Since it is a secondary compound, disabling the molecular machinery that makes it probably would not affect the rest of the plant's essential machinery.
Doing organic chemistry outside of the plant would pretty much ruin the rest of the pepper, so you're probably stuck doing some sort of genetic work after discovering the biochemistry of the molecule's production. Since the molecule is pretty stable, hydrolyzing that double bond might be fairly simple, but the byproducts would not be edible.
Well, the hydrolyzed molecule, sure But the leftover reactants? No so much.