Team:Paris Bettencourt/Citizen Science

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.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.

Figure 2a: The Smell Game.We collected samples of 300 volunteers from iGEM teams and citizen scientists and separated the ones with and without deodorant.Subjects smelled 6 samples and rated its intensity and pleasantness in addition to the emotions they felt on the platform.We also collected their sweat on cotton pads and answered a quick questionnaire about their daily habits.Collecting sweat from citizens and having them be smelt allowed us to study the impact of deodorant on smell intensity.The confidence interval is equal to 95%.
Figure 2b: The smell game.From the same samples.Comparing the pleasantness between these 2 types of samples is a good way to study the effect of deodorant on smell pleasantness.All the data generated through this game is anonymous and randomised automatically, (P=0.0235).
Figure 3a: The Smell Game.We studied the difference in odor intensity between genders.Since samples are anonymized, we were able to measure objectively the smell differences, (P=0.081). Figure 3b: The Smell Game.

Figure 4: The Smell Game.Differences we found with a significant increase for teenagers.

Figure 5: The horror movie experiment. We collected samples of 17 volunteers before and after watching a scary movie. Differences in strength and pleasantness were not found significant overall (Wilcoxon test, difference in strength p=0.69; difference in pleasantness p=0.84) although some individuals did experience a significant change (volunteers number 3 and 9). Samples were tested by at least 4 people.

Results

1. The smell game
The Smell Game was developped by a team from Rennes as a collaboration with Paris Bettencourt team. At this time, users can give a sample of his own sweat, play with the samples of others and then obtain a position of their smell. The web platform continues to evolve, with an important support of actual 'players' that helps to make the 'odor database' bigger. The Smell Game project relies on a web platform available at: http://smellofus.synbio4all.org.
To find out more about how this project emerged and was developped look at 'The Smell Game' page of the Wiki

Effect of deodorant on body odor
According to the Smelling Game, wearing deodorant does not alter the intensity of the smell, while people that do not use deodorant are considered to have a more pleasant smell. This statistically significant conclusion is based on more than 400 analyses of 200 unique samples.

Gender effect on body odor
There is no measurable difference between male and female body odor samples, for both intensity and pleasantness. This result is contradictory to the popular belief that females have a less intense and more pleasant odor (http://aurasensory.com/blog/did-you-know/fascinating-facts-about-underarm-odor-and-bacteria). One explanation could be that most women shave their armpits, which seems to be a condition that favors the bacterial growth.

Age effect on the odor intensity
Odor intensity was found to increase with the age. Surprisingly, the odor intensity of the 10-20 year olds was lower than the 20-35 years old participants. We limited our study to these four groups (name the groups!), to reflect the amount and age range of the participants.

2. Horror movie night experiment
We collected samples of 17 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). After statistical analysis, we found no significant increase in strength and decrease in pleasantness in the participant's body odor after watching the movie (Wilcoxon test, difference in strength p=0.69; difference in pleasantness p=0.84). Although some individuals did experiment a significant change.

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.