"
Team:Paris Bettencourt/Citizen Science
From 2014.igem.org
| Line 127: | Line 127: | ||
<h6>Introduction</h6><br> | <h6>Introduction</h6><br> | ||
<p class=text1>Body odor is a unique characteristic of each individual. Our body aroma is extremely complex and previous studies showed that this odor is influenced by many parameters, including lifestyle, diet, gender and age.</br></br> However, the relationship between these parameters and the body odor remain unclear. To assess this relationship, we chose a crowdsourcing approach, which has been shown to be successful in the past (ref: foldit) for big data scientific studies. </br></br> | <p class=text1>Body odor is a unique characteristic of each individual. Our body aroma is extremely complex and previous studies showed that this odor is influenced by many parameters, including lifestyle, diet, gender and age.</br></br> However, the relationship between these parameters and the body odor remain unclear. To assess this relationship, we chose a crowdsourcing approach, which has been shown to be successful in the past (ref: foldit) for big data scientific studies. </br></br> | ||
| - | In this process the general public can participate both by giving data and | + | In this process, the general public can participate both by giving data and analyzing it. While helping us with the project, they learn about their own odor and Synthetic Biology. |
</p> | </p> | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
Revision as of 11:04, 16 October 2014
| Introduction | Aims | Results | Achievements |
Introduction
Body odor is a unique characteristic of each individual. Our body aroma is extremely complex and previous studies showed that this odor is influenced by many parameters, including lifestyle, diet, gender and age. However, the relationship between these parameters and the body odor remain unclear. To assess this relationship, we chose a crowdsourcing approach, which has been shown to be successful in the past (ref: foldit) for big data scientific studies. In this process, the general public can participate both by giving data and analyzing it. While helping us with the project, they learn about their own odor and Synthetic Biology.
Aims
- Getting Citizen Scientists involved: The general public can be involved by either giving samples and/or by analyzing them through an online game called “The Smell Game”. - Collecting and analyzing armpit smell samples: The volunteers placed cotton pads under their armpits for a specified amount of time and filled a form with information about their lifestyle, diet, gender and age. - Developing an online game to analyze the samples and learn more about the microbiome: The participants use our online platform to analyze samples that have been given by other participants. People will assess their personal impression of the fragrance of the different samples. The final aim is to give users the analysis of their personal odor provided by others participants. - Study how emotions can affect body odor: Taking samples of volunteers before and after watching a horror movie and making a smell test to determine if there is a significant change in their body odor.
Results
1. Blablabla Text 2. Tururu Text 3. Horror movie night experiment We collected samples of 18 donors before and after watching a scary movie. After, both samples were rated in a scale from 0 to 5 in strength and pleasantness. At least 4 people analyzed every sample. The difference between the after and before tube was plotted for every individual (Fig. X).
Achievements
Overall, more than 600 participants from all around the world collaborated with us (France, Poland, Colombia, Israel, UK). They were aged from 5 to 65 years old. We hosted several smell events where Citizen Scientists were able to learn about our project and participate in it. One of the events took place at the 'Cité des Sciences' (a known Science Museum in Paris) called “Parfums Microbiens”. During three days, we held up a stand that included posters explaining the relationship between the microbiome and body odor, a place to analyze sweat samples using our 'Smell Game' software and an area to exercise playing a 'Wii' game and donate sweat samples. During this event, we collected around a hundred samples and analysis of smells.
+33 1 44 41 25 22/25
paris-bettencourt-igem@googlegroups.com 
