What is your favorite smell?

2001/04/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Genetika

According to a study at the University of Bern, the answer to the title question is also in genes. In this research, 137 university students gave 37 types of perfumes to smell, including vanilla, lilac, jasmine and bergamot. Each of the aromas had to be placed on a scale with “tastes” and “unpleasant” at the ends.

According to researchers, if people use perfume to highlight their smell, the steam hobby and genes encoding various proteins should be related. These proteins, on the one hand, have a very important function in the body's immune system and, on the other, also influence the personal smell. Therefore, they took blood samples and analyzed the genes encoding these proteins.

Students who had several of those same genes saw that they preferred the same scents. In addition, by repeating the research in two years, the students' hobbies did not change. According to researchers, perfumes are chosen by people to increase their natural smell and, at the same time, report on the structure of their immune system. However, other factors that influence this choice are study and customs. For example, although women aged 15 and 50 use very different aromas, that doesn't mean that genes change with age.