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Team:Paris Bettencourt
From 2014.igem.org
Body malodor has been a problem for humans engaging in social interactions throughout history and is caused by skin bacteria metabolizing sweat into odorant compounds. Currently, people can either mask body odor with perfumes or by preventing sweat using an antiperspirant.
The iGEM Paris Bettencourt 2014 team aims to provide a third, more natural way to put an end to body malodor using Synthetic Biology. Currently, there are four ongoing projects targeting armpit, foot, fish, as well as old person odor. The techniques used to eliminate the odor for each case will involve replacing malodorous bacteria with non-malodor producing bacteria. The team is also using bacteria to produce a smell database, where primary odors could be combined in bacteria to produce novel smells. The results of this project could go a long way towards helping eliminate body malodor and smelling just like themselves.
Bacteria processing sweat is the major responsible of body odor. Our projetc aims to study the bacteria involved in the creation of malodorant compounds and try to find natural variant that are odorless. The final goal would be to create a probiotic cosmetic.
2-nonenal is a compound, with very specific strong odor perceived as iris, fat, and cucumber, which rate increases with age. Our goal is to study relationship between human skin bacteria and 2-nonenal.
Trimethylaminuria (TMAU) is a rare genetic disease causing a strong fish odor. Our project aims at engineering skin bacteria to degrade trimethylamine, the odor causing molecule, by the enzyme TMM (trimethylamine monooxygenase).
Isovaleric acid is a compound produced by B. subtilis through leucine degradation pathway, which is hypothesized to be responsible for the foot odor (cheese smell.) Our project aims at validating this hypothesis with the aid of both invitro and insitu experimentation's.
+33 1 44 41 25 22/25
paris-bettencourt-igem@googlegroups.com 
