Science identifies the ancient enzyme in bacteria that makes humans' body odor so pungent:
Researchers have zeroed in on the source of our stink.
The same team that identified the handful of bacteria responsible for human body odor has now gone a step further and pinpointed the enzyme operating within those organisms. It's a cysteine-thiol lyase (C-T lyase) enzyme within bacteria like Staphylococcus hominis that makes the actual smelly molecules, which have inspired an entire industry of deodorants to contain them.
"This is a key advancement in understanding how body odour works, and will enable the development of targeted inhibitors that stop BO production at source without disrupting the armpit microbiome," said University of York researcher Dr. Michelle Rudden, in a release.
[...] "This research was a real eye-opener," said Unilever co-author Dr. Gordon James. "It was fascinating to discover that a key odor-forming enzyme exists in only a select few armpit bacteria and evolved there tens of millions of years ago."
Journal Reference:
Michelle Rudden, Reyme Herman, Matthew Rose, et al. The molecular basis of thioalcohol production in human body odour [open], Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-68860-z)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 29 2020, @04:08PM (1 child)
Vegetarians take note: Meat is indirectly stored plant based food. Just passed through a preprocessor first. (with macro support)
I wonder if BO evolved to make it easier for predator animals to locate prey?
Or maybe BO is to signal to predators to please make another selection and then press ENTER.
BO must be appealing as a mate selection feature or it would seem to be bred out? Yeast based BO would also be bread out.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:08PM
SN ran an article several years ago about BO and mate selection in humans.