ArticleScientific reports2020
The molecular basis of thioalcohol production in human body odour.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review
- Isolation, characterisation and potential applications of a novel bacteriophage targeting beta-lactam-resistant Staphylococcus saprophyticus.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Human Body Malodor and Deodorants: The Present and the Future.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Article
- High-resolutionMicrobial genomics · 2025Article
- Enhanced sensitivity to odors due to chemosignals associated with anxiety.Communications chemistry · 2025Article
- Past, Present, and Future of Human Chemical Communication Research.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Review
- Aging-dependent skin microbiome alterations across body sites in a United Kingdom cohort.Frontiers in aging · 2025Article
- Identification of a staphylococcal dipeptidase involved in the production of human body odor.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2024Article
- Interplay of human ABCC11 transporter gene variants with axillary skin microbiome functional genomics.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Using surface-enhanced Raman scattering for simultaneous multiplex detection and quantification of thiols associated to axillary malodour.The Analyst · 2024Article
- Microbial β C-S Lyases: Enzymes with Multifaceted Roles in Flavor Generation.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Integrated genomic and functional analyses of human skin-associatedProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Sweat and odor in sportswear - A review.iScience · 2023Review
- Isolation and Characterization of Yeast with Benzenemethanethiol Synthesis Ability Isolated from Baijiu Daqu.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Objective Odor Assessment in Patients with Osmidrosis.Plastic and reconstructive surgery. Global open · 2022Article
- Article
- The Ubiquitous Human Skin Commensal Staphylococcus hominis Protects against Opportunistic Pathogens.mBio · 2022Article
- Small molecules enhance the potency of natural antimicrobial peptides.Biophysical journal · 2022Article
- Real time observation of the interaction between aluminium salts and sweat under microfluidic conditions.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Body odour is a characteristic trait of Homo sapiens, however its role in human behaviour and evolution is poorly understood. Remarkably, body odour is linked to the presence of a few species of commensal microbes. Herein we discover a bacterial enzyme, limited to odour-forming staphylococci that are able to cleave odourless precursors of thioalcohols, the most pungent components of body odour. We demonstrated using phylogenetics, biochemistry and structural biology that this cysteine-thiol lyase (C-T lyase) is a PLP-dependent enzyme that moved horizontally into a unique monophyletic group of odour-forming staphylococci about 60 million years ago, and has subsequently tailored its enzymatic function to human-derived thioalcohol precursors. Significantly, transfer of this enzyme alone to non-odour producing staphylococci confers odour production, demonstrating that this C-T lyase is both necessary and sufficient for thioalcohol formation. The structure of the C-T lyase compared to that of other related enzymes reveals how the adaptation to thioalcohol precursors has evolved through changes in the binding site to create a constrained hydrophobic pocket that is selective for branched aliphatic thioalcohol ligands. The ancestral acquisition of this enzyme, and the subsequent evolution of the specificity for thioalcohol precursors implies that body odour production in humans is an ancient process.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.