A whole new line of smell-care!

Today, I had a funny thought.  What if there was a line of scents named after different bacteria?  No, I'm serious.  In the lab, we sometimes use the smell of a bacteria to help identify it.  In college, we are taught the proper way to smell a plate to minimize the risk of infecting ourselves with it.  Stenotrophomonas smells like "a perm."  I don't know what a perm smells like, but I actually really like the smell of Steno.  Eikenella smells distinctly like bleach.  And it really does.  Staphylococcus epidermidis is actually why B.O. smells the way it does.  Streptococcus intermedius smells like butterscotch.  Citrobacter freundii just smells like nasty.  Pseudomonas smells, to some, like grapes.  To others it smells like corn chips.  To others, such as myself, it smells like both.  I don't know how that is possible, but it really smells like both.  Pseudomonas' smell, in fact, is so distinct, that it is acceptable to result a culture with the phrase, "Looks and smells like Pseudomonas aeruginosa," and no further testing is required, so long as it doesn't have any characteristics which would make it impossible to be Pseudomonas (like growing on a CNA agar or something).  That's also because it looks metallic, which is not common, either. So if it has the grape smell and the metallic colonies, there's not really anything else it can be. When I was told that Proteus vulgaris smells like burnt chocolate, I thought, "No.  It's just the textbook being the textbook.  It's just like they say that sky blue histiocytes are sky blue, when they're actually just another shade of purple."  But then, I opened up a cultured plate of Proteus vulgaris and the first thing I thought was "It smells like someone burned chocolate!" The diagnostic test for bacterial vaginosis is actually called "The Whiff Test."  Officially.  It smells like fish.  Today, in the lab, I was working with an MLS who has been a micro scientist for thirty-five years.  We opened up a CF sputum culture (where all kinds of crazy things grow in places they shouldn't grow) and he just smelled it and said, "It's E. coli."  And after further testing, it turned out it was. The smell of E. coli isn't distinct enough that he could just call it there and then, so we had to confirm.  But maybe the rules should be the rest of us have to confirm it, he can just smell the thing.

And I thought, "What if I could buy Pseudomonas aeruginosa scent?"  How cool would that be?