Summer’s coming and the heat is on! Unfortunately.
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Our sweat is odorless, but our armpits can, er, stink.
Gurdeep Minhas and colleagues at Oxford found the culprit. In armpit bacteria, there is a transport protein.
Picture a conveyor belt bringing nutrients into the bacteria. On it are packages of odorless chemicals from our sweat. Somewhere down the line, they gain a sulfur atom. Sulfur is usually responsible for sour smells, like rotten eggs. Hence, the stank.
Modern deodorants work by killing or hampering our armpit bacteria. But not ALL bacteria are to blame! By targeting the bacterial protein Minhas found, chemists could develop more effective deodorants.
And THAT smells like progress!
Reference: Minhas, G. S., Bawdon, D., Herman, R., Rudden, M., Stone, A. P., James, A. G., Thomas, G. H., & Newstead, S. (2018). Structural basis of malodour precursor transport in the human axilla. eLife, 7, e34995. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.34995