Perfume and Technology: Our Friends, the Microbes

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I was doing an interview with an independent perfumer in Amsterdam earlier this year when I was introduced to the concept of lab-created “natural” scent components. That sounds like a complete contradiction, doesn’t it? You might imagine my surprise at this idea, but curiosity is a powerful driver, so I investigated further. The substance we were discussing in particular is a component created by Firmenich called Clearwood. It is indeed a clear, medium-weight scent component that bears a striking resemblance to patchouli and other earthy/woody essential oils. However, it is notably cleaner and less heavy and oily, the way patchouli can sometimes feel when used in the raw.

Its actual creation is compelling: It’s a byproduct of the action of microbes on natural sugars. And what happens when the microbes are gorging themselves on these sugars? They release a complex and fascinating smell. Even more compelling is how it came to be made. It began with a massive patchouli shortage in 2010, where excessive rains led to a soggy landscape and a dismal crop. Something was direly needed to sustain the worldwide need for patchouli. Scientific inquiry led to Clearwood, but even more importantly, it suggested that there may be new ways in which we can protect against overharvesting natural resources, to be prepared for when those sources are compromised.

The question of how these components come about intrigued me, so I began my own searching. I did what I often do when I want to do very impromptu and guerrilla research: I go to Reddit. This site has many specialized subreddits where highly trained and enthusiastic content experts answer questions that come from the general public. I posed a question in the subreddit called ChemHelp: “What chemical reactions of organic molecules create a pleasant smell?” Some fascinating answers came back. One scientist explained how his lab was studying the levels of decay that occur in forest conditions; in particular, pine and pine needles. He explained how the smells changed as the decay occurred over time, and how they remained pleasant (though of different character) as the time passed. Another researcher suggested I look at some other substances that create new (and different) smells as they changed chemically, and pointed me to some scholarly articles.

The volatility of availability has some particularly regular victims, mostly rose, sandalwood, grapefruit, and blood orange. They are frequently at-risk natural oil sources whose abundance can be checked quickly by political upheaval, drought, inclement weather, or breakdowns in distribution chains. A few companies have risen to the occasion to experiment in creating microbe-induced “natural” substance replacers. Allylix and Isobionics, relatively new players in the flavor and fragrance field, are both in the business of creating citrus replacers, namely Valencene (citrus-apple-like flavor and fragrance) and Nootkatone (grapefruit/cedar scented food flavor).

These are just a few of the many in development by different labs around the world. As Melody M. Bomgardner says in her article “The Sweet Smell of Microbes” (Chemical and Engineering News), “Most development work is done in partnerships similar to those used by large pharmaceutical companies and their biotech research partners but under extremely secretive conditions.” Because of this, it’s difficult for us to know exactly what they’re up to. It’s about as secretive as the ingredients in perfumes themselves.

The way that microbes act is both simple and extremely complex. The process which is at play here is primarily fermentation. A good parallel process is to think of the smell of beer as the combined barley (usually turned to sugars), and bacteria are brought together. Different variable actions can occur as its made to give a beer its distinct scent and flavor, much the same with bacteria and sugars in a lab. In the world of scent and flavor, one of the nearer goals is to create scent compounds that are now made “artificially” (or chemically). For instance, supplanting chemically-made aldehydes with aldehydes created by fermentation. Many other substances are on the short list for this kind of bacterially-made perfumery: ethers, esters, and ketones, to name a few.

There have already been some big strides in this arena: Givaudin has patented a microbial version of vanillin. Ginko Bioworks is creating, with Firmenich, a group of seven perfume components from the lactone family that will smell like coconut, apricot, peach and mango. As Deanna Utroske says in her article about the partnership for Cosmetics Design, “Conventionally, lactones come from tropical plants, such as the Massoia trees in Papua New Guinea. According to Gingo Bioworks, the extraction process kills the tree so chemical processes are increasingly used to create alternative ingredients.”

The perfume world responded well to Clearwood. It received numerous awards including the Innovation Prize at Sepawa in 2015, and is used in many new perfumes Including Penhaligon’s Blasted Heath, Blasted Bloom, and Tom Ford’s Patchouli Absolu. Perfumer Elise Benat for Rituals lists it as one of her favorite perfume components. And of course, because it was created with organic components in a bacterial process, it’s considered “natural”. But what does natural exactly mean?

Natural, like the word organic, can have different specific meanings in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia… This is in some ways a technical question, and also a philosophical one. To some minds, a natural product should come directly from the source. To another mind, if it looks exactly the same under a microscope and came from natural materials, it’s just as natural as the former. As a parallel example, there is some difference of opinion about what is “natural” in the world of natural perfumery. Certain scent isolates or extractions from natural products are on different sides of the line of natural and human-altered, depending on one’s point of view.

Generally speaking, the scientific community in various countries has developed their own consensus as to what is natural or not. Biochemical products like Clearwood can be considered a natural product, and is generally advertised as such.

One thing is certain and most agree: sourcing natural-origin materials is an important concern for everyone, whether they like perfume or not. Losing forests of sandalwood trees is devastating for everyone. In my conversations with perfumers, they are all (generally speaking) very sensitive to the concerns of sourcing, and embrace the idea of microbe-produced products. It’s an area in the future of perfumery that looks very bright, and promises to offer new avenues to scents that are not nearly as steady as the dependability of bacteria. As much as we thank those little creatures for our beer, we are thanking them for our patchouli now, too.