What’s that smell?

Hey Guys!

So today I’m going to do a bit of a boring post and talk about some of the compounds I’m working with in the lab. I briefly touched on them last week but I thought it might be cool to learn a bit more about them and maybe talk about some other interesting smells.

The compounds I’m look at the moment are all terpene compounds as I mentioned last week. They are compounds made up of isoprene units. Nature joins them together in different ways to make up a range of compounds.

Why am I looking at terpene compounds? Well, I’m reacting them with my P450 enzyme (that I discussed in my first post) to see where it reacts. This can change the smell of the compound and can be used to make perfumes and other fragrance items.

The first compounds I used were alpha-ionone, beta-ionone and beta-damascone. These compounds are present in flowers and really do smell lovely. They are known as rose ketones as they contain a ketone functional group (the C=O) and are present in roses. They are also found in violets in relatively small amounts but they have a very strong smell. As a result of this they make up most of the smell in roses and violets.

A rose which contains ionones and damascone for the smell. Credit to Parvin.

Camphor is another compound and is the main ingredient in vicks vaporub. It gives a cooling sensation similar to menthol when absorbed through the skin.

Vicks which is soothing due to the camphor present. Credit to yto.

 

Fenchone is similar to camphor. It is found in absinthe and the essential oil of fennel. It smells similar to camphor but is still used in perfumes and other fragrance items.

Fennel wich contains Fenchone. Credit to Nick Saltmarsh

1,8-Cineole is known as Eucalyptol and you may be surprised to learn that it is the main compound present in Eucalyptus oil. However, it is also present in food flavourings as it has a pleasantly spicy flavour.

Eucalyptus trees which contain 1,8-cineole. Credit to John-Morgan

So how do we smell all these different compounds?  There are some neurons in the back of your nose which tell your brain what you are smelling. The compound that smells binds to these neurons and that sends a message to the brain about what you are smelling. Different shaped compounds produce the different smells by binding to the neurons in a different orientation. Generally, similar functional groups produce similar smells. Compounds with ketones smell like flowers and compounds with esters smell like fruits.

If you enjoyed this post and you want to read more about this topic, you could read this interesting series of posts on the smells in vegemite (part 1, part 2, part 3). You would be amazed at how many smells go into vegemite.

I have some cool posts planned for the next few weeks so keep reading!
Remember I post every Saturday.
Emma

Update Time

Hey Guys!

So I know I haven’t posted in a while but I have been super busy with sciencey stuff. It was national science week which is more like national science month. After that I had heaps of Uni work and its finally started to calm down. This will just be a quick update about what I’ve been up to and what I’m thinking about doing with this blog.

Alicia and me with our pretty nails at Science Alive!

To start of national science week I was helping out at science alive. I spent three days helping out the Young Scientists of Australia. I help out every year and it was an enjoyable but tiring three days. We do heaps of cool science demonstrations to entertain the hundreds of kids who come to learn about science. Hopefully we get some of them interested in science so they study it in the future. Since I started taking an interest in painting my nails this year, I decided that I needed to paint my nails with a science theme. Here is a slightly crappy phone photo. Let me know in the comments if you can guess all the different areas of science.

Close up of my nails. Can you guess all the sciences?

The weekend afterwards was open day which is another busy day. Open day is more about students seeking advice instead of teaching people about science. It is still fun and I enjoy helping people decide about their studies. I like to give people the useful advice that I was given when i was starting at university or maybe the advice I didn’t get.
I also had to do some cool chemistry nails for the day. Here is another phone picture of them.

My chemitry nails

I’ve started a new part of my research and it all smells really nice because  it uses terpene compounds  such as camphor. Terpenes are a group of compounds that are made by plants. So some of them smell really pretty because they are what makes the flowers smell. All the biologist are really jealous because my stuff smells really nice and theirs smells horrible. They haven’t worked out mine smells bad too till I add the terpene compounds.

So I have been thinking about this blog and I have decided to do Science Saturdays. Yay! Every Saturday I’m going to try and do a science post. Hopeully I don’t run out of ideas. I might post more some weeks if I’m free or if I want to subject you to pretty pictures of my nails. If you don’t want to wait to see pretty nails go check out my instagram I post most of them on there. I’m emmahall91. Oh and anyone who likes Harry Potter and science should check out Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It is awesome and I’ve been wasting a lot of time reading it and not doing things I should be doing, like this blog.

See you guys next week
Emma