Jurassic Park for Perfume: Ginkgo Bioworks Reconstructs Scents From Extinct Plants

Move aside, Chanel No. 5. Scientists have now created a scent that's even older than the iconic perfume, even if it has only just wafted into human nostrils for the first time in more than 100 years. That's because the piney, earthy perfume derives its fragrance compounds from a Hawaiian hibiscus flower that vanished from the dry-land forests of Maui in the early 1910s. Researchers at Ginkgo Bioworks, one of the largest synthetic-biology companies in world, succeeded in resurrecting the smell by expressing the genes needed for making the defunct flower's pungent aroma molecules in microbes. Ginkgo unveiled--and demoed--the new perfume at the company's inaugural annual meeting in Boston last week. It's like "Jurassic Park, but for perfume," says Ginkgo's creative director, Christina Agapakis.