Odd ingredients

Inscribed on the ingredient list for the bag of chips I munched this morning was this oddity:

Disodium guanylate.

Since guany- sounds disturbingly close to the word for the stinky stuff that bird colonies deposit on tropical nesting grounds, I felt compelled to do some research.

No connection.

DG is the disodium salt of guanosine monophosphate.

Wikipedia informs me that it: Is also known as 5'-guanidylic acid or guanylic acid and abbreviated GMP, is a nucleotide that is found in RNA. It is an ester of phosphoric acid with the nucleoside guanosine.

GMP consists of the phosphate group, the pentose sugar ribose, and the nucleobase guanine. Guanosine monophosphate is produced from dried fish or dried seaweed.[citation needed]

Guanosine monophosphate in the form of its sodium salt disodium guanylate (E627) is a food additive used as a flavor enhancer to provide the umami [savory] taste.

I wonder how "they" discover stuff like this. Do scientists in gleaming labs boil bits of fish and seaweed down to the bare molecules and then taste the distillates?