5’-Guanylate

I often use dried shiitake mushrooms to bump up the savory notes of a stock. When the cells of a food are alive, the nucleic acid, RNA, is kept hidden away from an enzyme called ribonuclease that specifically works to break it down. When cells dry, as in these mushrooms, they lose their structural integrity and break, bringing the enzyme into direct contact with the RNA, and they produce 5’-guanylate.