Cloning the Smell of the Sea

An anonymous reader wrote in with an article that opens: "Scientists from the University of East Anglia have discovered exactly what makes the seaside smell like the seaside — and bottled it. The age-old mystery was unlocked thanks to some novel bacteria plucked from the North Norfolk coast." The responsible substance, dimethyl sulfide, in addition to smelling like the coast, also acts as a homing scent for birds looking to feast on plankton.

Comments

Re:intresting

[BrokenHalo]

I'll be having my sea-side air (freshener?) thank you!

You didn't have to wait. It has been known that dimethyl sulfide is the main component of the smell for many years. I distinctly remember it being mentioned when I was in high school, and that was in the '70s.

Re:intresting

[mlush]

Very intresting research but why do we need to find out why the seaside smells like the seaside? I'm all for curiousity and discovering stuff, but this sounds really useless. How about a different spin on the story

New biosynthetic pathway for dimethyl sulphide discovered

Dimethyl sulphide is used in petroleum refining, steel mills and as a feed stock for the important solvent dimethyl sulfoxide. It is hoped that these the new bacterial synthetic pathway can replace the current polluting industrial process with a cleaner greener biosynthetic process.