Team:Paris Bettencourt/Project

Here we present a genetic odor palette. It is built of BioBricks to express enzymes to produce volatile compounds with characteristic smells. We included smells with different tonalities to allow exploration of the "odor space" resulting from combinations of smelly units.

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, with the enzyme trimethylamine monooxygenase (TMM).

Isovaleric acid, the cheesy component of foot odor, is produced by B. subtilis through the leucine degradation pathway. We characterize B. subtilis mutants in this pathway, in vitro and in situ (on socks).

Bacteria processing sweat is the major responsible of body odor. Our project aims to study the bacteria involved in the creation of malodorous compounds and try to find natural variant that are odorless. The final goal is 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.

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.

Bioinformatics tools are used to analyze genes related to body odor in order to better understand gene abundance at various body sites, function and phylogeny.