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doi:10.1038/nindia.2009.332; Published online 10 November 2009

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MIT award for 'smell of first rains'

A team of undergraduate students from Bangalore has earned laurels at an international competition for making a bacteria that can help create the smell of earth after the first monsoon rains.

Ten design students from the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology conducted an experiment that borrowed equally from the arts and sciences to construct the bacteria that could make geosmin, the substance responsible for the emotive smell of freshly ploughed earth, or of the first monsoon rains.

This item is available free as a special feature to registered visitors. To read this story in full you will need to log in or register with nature.com (see right).

(If you have already registered with any of NPG's online journals, you do not need to register again.)