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Sweat-Eating Bacteria to Live in Your Clothes
amyaimee writes: "Perfect for you hygiene-challenged computer geeks (you know who you are): New Scientist reports on a new clothing made of milkweed containing a special strain of e. coli designed to feed on human sweat and the proteins that cause B.O. Alex Lightman of Charmed Technology quips, "I wear the same pair of jeans all the time and I'm sure they have bacterial colonies living in them, but if they were selected to convert my sweat into sweet-smelling pheromones, that would be great," he says."
Buy our flasy new threads, with NEW, IMPROVED pheremone enhancement. These clothes will actually generate attractive scents as you wear them! etc., etc.
Selling these wouldn't be a problem. Just don't mention that your new improved process involves live bacterial cultures. (OTOH, live yoghurt sells well, so that may not be necessary.)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In the words of MST3K, "Well, she was going to smell like beer sooner or later."
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There would be a lot of naked hippies?
call me stupid, but i still don't get it
What if your milkweed-based clothing were infested by ravenous mutant Monarch butterfly larvae?
There are lots of different strains of Escherichia Coli, some good, some bad. This micro-organism is very well known since it is easy to research.
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>Fowler hopes to reactivate them by soaking
>the milkweed fibres in additional nutrients.
Waiter, I'll have the soup and salad combo. Can I have a big bowl of beef broth too? It's for my jacket...
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Where such bacteria could make real sense is one-time non-fabric underwear and such -- I heard that in Japan it is a usual thing.
A spray that contain these bacteria in inactive state, that can be used on any clothes (or a car seat, or whatever) could be much more practical.
A genetic mechanism that forces the bacteria to die after, say, 1e+5 generations, can be seen as a reasonable safety measure, too.
Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes
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As I said in my original post - most brands do nothing. It's about time they came up with some that do, though I'd rather have anti-perspirant cos sweat is still kinda gross even if it doesn't smell.
PLUG PRICE="cheap"There's more random crap over at my homepage too/PLUG
The one time that the ever inane "CowboyNeal" option would actually be funny and it's not even an option.
Sigh.. I guess I'll just have to choose "Rolling Rock, or maybe it was Heineken" since it did take about 6.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Cool! I wonder whether the bacteria's excreta will smell better or worse than the perspiration they feed on! Any thoughts on this?
Thanks to that kind of innovation now I won't have to take a shower every month, it'll probably be every three months or so :)
Since I never iron my shirts, I guess that won't be much of a problem though.
^]:wq!^M
best laugh I've had all day, thanks buddy *LOL*
Took me a second to digest it. Ah, for the days when ascii art was king. Adobe ASCIIshop anyone?
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Since I actually wash myself minimum once a day(if ive played soccer or skateboarded that that day, I would probertly do two :o) , a dust eating parasite would be alot more interesting. Then i wouldnt have to clean my appartment all the time.. Dust sucks...
PS. Get a girlfriend, she probertly wouldnt let you run around in the same pants all the time anyway..
A question: any chance those E. coli bacteria could mutate into a harmful strain?
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
you're totally right... but that would be one hacked bacterial genome!
;-)
;-P
normally in the fermentation/ rot/ stinkiness process, successive cycles of creatures take over these descending paths of chemical dead-ends as you suggested from acids to alcohols to formaldehydes to carbon dioxide... as the chemical environment changes...
having said that, why hack one organism's genome? stick all these organisms together in cooperative symbiotic mode, like a lichen, just like in nature
then encapsulate them all in some sort of semi-permeable membrane/ beads and you won't have to worry about them competing with the wild bacteria
now the problem is that this becomes a real complex bio-hack... good luck!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The smell you have under your arms is not the sweat itself.
Its the excrement of the bacterias that is living under your arms and feesding on your sweat.
So if the other type of bacterias manour is smelling better it migth be a good thing :)
Or how about this:
Genemanipulate a bacteria that will eat other sweat bacteria.
Other modifcations:
Make the excrement that the bacteria produce smell better.
No mather what the choises wil be... take a shower
Ascii(64)
A few years ago, Dinson-Merrill developed a similar product in order to significantly improve their odor-eater-type shoe insert/foot desmellerizer product.
During pre-production product testing, they discovered that about 2% of the pilot program users had developed a serious allergic reaction to the bacteria. The last I heard, the product was put on the back burner - they couldn't adequately circumvent the health issue.
This seems like a nearly identical idea, and so the same health concerns would apply.
I read somewhere that Cameron Diaz hates deodorant and anti-perspirant. I am willing to bet money she will pet some of these bacteria :)
Mmmm, me wants to become sweat-eating bacteria on her now !#%
"the majority of their metabolic byproducts will still be what makes them "gross": lactic acid, butyric acid, tartaric acid, other nasty smelling compounds..."
Not necessarily, there are other compounds which can also serve as the end product of a fermentation process. For instance, alcohols. And if you choose to use more advanced organisms that engage in oxidative phosphorylation, you can go all the way to C02 + H2O.
On a different note, I'd choose something other than E. coli for this purpose. An endospore-forming bacterium would be much tougher, as you could expect at least a small fragment of the population to survive just about anything short of an autoclave.
The primary source of E.Coli is feces (i.e.shit). It lives (and helps) in your digestive system. It survives outside for a relative long period, longer than most bacteria.
Thus E.Coli (Escheria Coli) is used as an indicator for bacteria in drinking water in general. Drinking water that is contaminated with E.Coli probably is contaminated with sewer water.
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the pun is mightier than the sword
it's my shirt, my boxers, and she's wearing 'em.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Well, there goes the best way to get some space on the subway/bus. No more three weeks+ old B.O.
The only such product I've seen that has anti-bacterial properties is a King Of Shaves spray with some sort of bacteria-killing herbal extract - dunno if you'd call this a deodorant or not
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I wear the same pair of jeans all the time and I'm sure they have bacterial colonies living in them
I'm sure they'd rather live in vacuum if they had a choice.
Incidentally, does anyone know just how close to the skin these clothes have to be? I don't want to have to have a permanent wedgie when it's warm just because my ass sweats a lot.
Wait, I guess that's the same as Option 5: "That homeless guy on the subway".
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
bacteria are bacteria are bacteria...
...but there is a reason why these compounds are natural chemical dead-ends... they are energetic dead-ends as well: it's breaking the second law of thermodynamics: you can't have the bacteria churning out more energetic chemical processes than the energy you give them... there's a reason lactic acid is a dead-end chemical street: the bacteria have evolved to extract as much energy from a chemical source as they could, and they have, and they do... there's no getting around that energetic roadblock...
yeah sure, you can engineer them to manufacture some phermones, or lilac scent, or febreeze, or whatever as a byproduct of their metabolic efforts, but:
the majority of their metabolic byproducts will still be what makes them "gross": lactic acid, butyric acid, tartaric acid, other nasty smelling compounds...
it's hard to simply edit these compounds out of the bacterial output, as these compounds are simply the natural chemical dead-ends to well-established bacterial metabolic pathways.
"well, you can engineer other processes to destroy these compounds as well"
plus, like any other ecosystem: the savannah, a coral reef, your intestines, there is a bitter battle for survival raging.
it has been proven that bacteria without antibiotic resistance successfully displace and kill off bacteria with antibiotic resistance in the wild... why? because to defend themselves against antibiotics, resistant bacteria are exerting a hefty metabolic toll in order to survive... without antibiotics to worry about, those bacteria who are free to devote all of their metabolic efforts to survival and reproduction will outcompete their metabolically-hobbled cousins...
so what do you think will happen in these milkweed clothes when mr. i-make-phermones bacteria functioning at 70% metabolic maximum due to it's genetically-engineered burden is forced to compete for food with mr. wild-as-i-wanna-be bacteria functioning at 100% metabolic maximum? hmmph
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it