{
  "id": 10711419,
  "title": "The chemistry of families: Linking body odor composition to olfactory perception",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/29/the-chemistry-of-families-linking-body-odor-composition-to-olfactory",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-29T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.29.755001v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Researchers have uncovered a connection between body odor composition and olfactory perception within families. The study involved 33 human raters who evaluated body odors collected from 60 donors from 15 biological families. Each family consisted of a mother, father, and an adolescent same-sex sibling pair, with eight sister dyads and seven brother dyads.\n\nBody odor samples were collected using cotton pads for presentation to human raters and thermal desorption (TD) tubes for Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis. The study found that relatedness and sex played a role in perceived body odor similarity between parent-offspring and unrelated control dyads. Chemical profiles showed greater similarity within families compared to unrelated individuals. Similar to the perceptual results, relatedness and sex also predicted chemical similarity based on whole odor profiles.\n\nA machine-learning prediction model that integrated both perceptual and chemical data revealed a small but significant positive association between the chemical similarity of body odor and perceived olfactory similarity. This suggests that odor perception may be partially informed by chemical characteristics. Overall, the research expands our understanding of human chemosensory communication and supports the idea of a family-specific olfactory signature.",
  "summary": "Body odors inform human kin recognition. However, underlying chemical mechanisms and how they relate to body odor perception are still unclear. The present study therefore simultaneously examined perceptual body odor similarity according to human raters, its chemical basis and the link between the two in human families. The study included 33 raters who assessed body odors collected from 60 odor…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}