IGEM:MIT/2006/Blurb

This summer, MIT's iGEM 2006 team is developing bacteria that smell pleasant. We have inserted several genes into bacterial genomes to make the cells produce wintergreen, jasmine, floral, and fruit scents. Scents can act as natural biological tags and have many extended applications. By attaching the scent tag to a case-sensitive promoter, we can engineer a cellular system to report on environmental conditions. Also, since E. coli naturally produce a fecal smelling compound, we feel that engineering our system will be useful to scientists worldwide as it will make lab work with E. coli bacteria a little less painful. Other bacteria are responsible for producing human odor problems in the mouth, armpits, and feet. By implementing our system in these foul smelling bacteria, we could potentially develop bacterial deoderant. In addition, we could implement our system in yeast, thereby producing new flavors and scents in bread and beer.