489: Soil Smell Synthesis Significance

This episode: Many organisms produce the smell of earth, geosmin,
and many others can sense it–but why?


Download Episode (6.0 MB, 8.7 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Acidianus spindle-shaped virus 1


 


News item


 


Takeaways


The smell of soil or earth is one of the most recognizable
smells, and comes largely from a chemical called geosmin,
produced by many different kinds of bacteria. Many animal species
are sensitive to geosmin, some attracted by it and others
repelled. But it is still not entirely understood what is the
evolutionary benefit to the microbes that produce it, or the
reason why different animals are sensitive to it in different
ways.

In this study, different geosmin-producing bacteria were paired
with tiny bacteria-eating roundworms, nematodes, to see how the
chemical affected their interactions. Production of geosmin
affected the worms' movement, apparently inducing them to avoid
colonies of the producing microbes in some cases, though the
worms still sometimes fed on the bacteria. Adding geosmin to
colonies of different bacteria did not affect the worms' behavior
though, so other factors seem to be involved.




Journal Paper:

Zaroubi L, Ozugergin I, Mastronardi K, Imfeld A, Law C, Gélinas
Y, Piekny A, Findlay BL. 2022. The Ubiquitous Soil Terpene
Geosmin Acts as a Warning Chemical. Appl Environ Microbiol
88:e00093-22.


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