Perfume from bacteria
MUCH of our characteristic body smells are attributed to the metabolic activity of the prevalent type of microorganisms a person harbours. This is due to the overwhelming presence of microorganisms in our body that one day may define human or animal as "made of microorganisms"!
As a faculty at Dhaka University, I taught an organic chemistry class. To make this apparently boring subject interesting, I would offer (explain) my sleepy 8 AM-class with the chemical components of coffee (caffeine) brewed with cinnamon (phenylpropionate), or offer a thirsty, sweaty and stinky noon-class with vanilla or vanillin (orthomethoxy-parahydroxy-benzaldehyde) ice cream flavour or the substitute for deer-musk perfume (dinitrobenzaldehyde). The trick was very effective! So, it is only natural that news of variations in the fragrance of vevitar grass oil (Khas attar), will not escape my attention.
In 2008, Italian scientists announced the discovery of two bacterial groups that are responsible for transforming sesquiterpine, the main component of the vevitar grass oil into secondary compounds giving rise to differences in fragrance. Microorganisms have long been used to produce almost all kinds of bio-molecules. From their discovery, the Italian scientists saw a great potential to advance fragrance and flavour chemistry by exploiting bacteria with biotechnology.
Then, Chemical & Engineering News gave an account ("The sweet smell of microbes," July 16, 2012) of the $22 billion (2011 data) cosmetic and perfume manufacturers' efforts to produce plant fragrances in bacteria. After the price of patchouli oil increased following the recent volcanic eruptions in Indonesia, perfume buyers started to worry about all plant-derived fragrances. Valencene from orange and nootkatone from grapefruit are two different naphthalene derivatives belonging to sesquaterpenes. Others like rose (several cyclohex-butanone derivatives), sandalwood (isobornyl cyclohexanol), and jasmine (mostly benzyl acetate) fragrances have additional simpler chemicals.
Due to business secrecy, little of the biotechnological achievements are known, but several patent applications allowed a glimpse of the efforts to produce fragrance molecules. Typically a terpene synthase gene from a plant is inserted into the bacteria E. coli or the baker's yeast S. cerevesia, and the whole fragrance synthetic route is engineered, so the microorganism can produce a specific sesquaterpene or another compound. One company has patented the microbial route to vanilln.
Genetic engineering of a soil bacterium has elucidated certain aromatic polyketide biosynthetic pathway (Acc Chem Res 42:631 (2009). Similarly, aromatic shikimate pathway has been engineered in bacteria (Curr Opin Biotechnol 20:651 (2009). In December of 2012, Swiss scientists cloned the machinery for synthesis of the highly priced sperm whale ambergris musk components in E. coli (JACS 134: 18900 (2012). Therefore, it is only a matter of time to direct the friendlier microbe to produce the plant and animal fragrances of our liking. Bangalee scientists can start working on our indigenous flowers producing unique fragrances; the field is barren!
Only imagination can lead to newer discoveries, technologies and styles. Our body harbours zillions of E. coli bacteria. How about transplanting some of their engineered, fragrance-producing relatives in our body? Shall we one day be able to suppress our body odor by such an Eu de bacter perfume?
The writer, a former Dhaka University teacher, is a biomedical scientist working in the USA.
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