Researchers crack olfactory code for partner selection, synthesise first biologically effective perfume
(Medical Xpress)—Individual body odour plays an important role in partner selection. Humans, mice, fish and birds, and probably other vertebrates too, receive important information about a potential partner's immune system from their body odour. A partner is chosen on the bases of whether he or she offers the optimum complement to the individual's own immune genes. The aim is to pass on a wide variety of immune genes to the offspring so that they are resistant to a broad spectrum of pathogens. Although several hundred different forms of the immune genes exist in humans, individuals only have a few variants which co-determine their typical body odour, their individual "scent". Scientists from the Max Planck Institutes of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg and for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, together with colleagues from the University of Dresden Medical School, have succeeded in explaining the chemical nature of this individual scent, synthesized it...