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Not everyone wants to sniff the compounds known as putrescine and cadaverine — this particular sample isn’t as awful as you might think — but many eagerly take part in the final display.

Arginine is then converted to putrescine in the cytosol.

Production of the molecules spermidine and putrescine becomes higher than normal.

It turns out that death, in odor form, is indeed straightforward: a couple of relatively coöperative naturally occurring chemicals, putrescine and cadaverine, are responsible for the characteristic smell of a decaying corpse.

The aptly-named putrescine and cadaverine, produced by the body just after death, are what make the scent of a rotting corpse so smelly.