Body Odor May Smell Worse to You Than Your Ancient Ancestors
The New York Times
Researchers worked out which receptors in your nose detect particular scent molecules, and found evidence of evolutionary change in some of these genes.
When you take a whiff of something, odor molecules sail inside your nose where they bind to proteins — called olfactory receptors — on cells that line your nasal cavity. These receptors trigger signals that your brain interprets as one or many smells.
A team of scientists has identified the olfactory receptors for two common odor molecules: a musk found in soaps and perfumes and a compound prominent in smelly underarm sweat. The research team also discovered that more recent evolutionary changes to these olfactory receptors alter people’s sensitivities to those odors. The work was published in PLoS Genetics on Thursday.
Olfactory receptors can be traced back hundreds of millions of years and are believed to be present in all vertebrates. Humans have around 800 olfactory receptor genes, but only about half of them are functional, meaning they’ll be translated into proteins that hang out in the nose and detect odor molecules. But within a functional gene, minor variations can cause changes in its corresponding receptor protein, and those changes can massively affect how an odor is perceived.
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