(ORDO NEWS) — The Monell Center, USA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a study that showed that the human sense of smell is gradually becoming less sensitive. A person almost does not notice the smell of his own sweat!
This seems like good news… After all, no one wants to smell their armpits all the time!
Everyone perceives smells differently. The same smell can be pleasant, too intense, or even imperceptible to different noses. Scientists believe that these differences lie in genetics.
In a new study, researchers screened the genomes of 1,000 Chinese people to find genetic variations associated with how participants perceived 10 different scents.
They then repeated the experiment for six odors in an ethnically diverse population of 364 people to confirm their results. The team identified two new receptors, one that recognizes a synthetic musk used in perfume, and the other a compound found in human armpit odor!
The participants carried different versions of the musk and sweat odor receptor genes. They influenced how a person perceived smells.
Combined with previously published results, the researchers found that humans with inherited versions of odor receptors (the version shared by other non-human primates) tend to rate the corresponding odor as more intense.
These results support the hypothesis that the sense of smell of humans and other primates has deteriorated over time due to changes in the set of genes that code for our odor receptors.
That is, mutations in the receptors that have been occurring for millennia have made us less sensitive to body odors.
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