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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday July 29 2020, @01:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-is-that-smell? dept.

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)


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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @04:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @04:42PM (#1028169)

    Instead of constantly whining about the smell of humans, Vulcans like T'Pol should have been able to use this information to make 22nd century humans smell better. If the 21st century can solve this problem, why can't the same thing work in the 22nd century?

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