dear reader i"m Bram Gremmen from the Netherlands and i am doing some sort of project for my graduation. and i would like to ask a few questions. were does the smell come from and wich bacterie are the most important for that, and what are these bacteria doing that there is this kind of smell. thank you very much and sorry for my english kind regards Bram Grremmen
1 Answers
Hi Bram, interesting project you're doing! To answer your questions: the smell comes from apocrine secretions, consisting from amino acids, long chain fatty acids and hormones. The fresh sweat does not smell bad. The bacteria living on & in your armpit skin 'eat' these secretions and produce as waste products malodours. Bacteria the most important for that: Corynebacterium, Anaerococcus, Peptoniphilus, Staphylococcus hominis. (This is an interesting article to this regard). These bacteria simply have other enzymes and a different metabolism than the others. The other bacteria convert the apocrine secretions in a completely different way, so no malodours are formed. Or they fully catabolize the apocrine compounds, or they do not have the enzymatic potential to cleave off the malodorous compounds. Hope this helps, Chris
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