Microbiologist Steve Chambers wanted to know what tuberculosis (TB) smells like. So the University of Otago, New Zealand, researcher cultured Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for the disease, and then fitted absorbent fiber tubes into the headspace of the culture vials to capture the volatile odors that the bacteria emitted. He analyzed the extracts using a gas chromatographer/mass spectrometer, and found four compounds that appeared to be made by M. tuberculosis. Chambers reasoned that if the breath of TB patients were also laced with these compounds, he might have found an alternate method for detecting the disease. Indeed, when he tested the breath of patients, he detected one of his four volatiles, methyl nicotinate (exhaled as nicotinic acid by patients)—a key note in the perfume of tuberculosis.
When one of Chambers’s colleagues caught wind of the discovery, he put him in touch with fellow New Zealand scientist Max Suckling at ...
