Aaah, a great work out! Wait, is that me?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Your morning workout comes with you to work — on your clothes! EVERYONE knows when you’ve been to the gym. But what if your CLOTHES were the deodorant?
Filipa Goncalves and her team from the University of Minho came up with two strategies. They modified regular cotton fabric to release a fresh, lemony fragrance in response to sweat. How?
They use a protein complex called CBM which attaches to cotton. Their first approach involves attaching CBM to a protein which can bind scent molecules.
In their second strategy, they attached it to tiny fat sacs. The fragrance was packaged inside the sacs. Next, they exposed cotton fabrics with CBM to sweat. This caused the scent molecules to detach and release from the modified fabric.
For a quick burst of fragrance, try the first method! Choose the second one for a slow and prolonged release of scent.
Sounds like a fragrant solution…to a sour dilemma!