A component of body odor can smell sweet like vanilla, foul like urine or like nothing at all depending on what kind of genes a person carries, according to a new study.

The study, published online this week by the journal Nature, is the first to demonstrate a human gene’s influence on odor perception, said Charles Wysocki, a neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia who was not involved in the study.

Geneticist Hiro Matsunami of Duke University and colleagues tested 400 people for their sensitivity to a compound called androstenone, which is produced in the body in the same process that produces testosterone and is often found in sweat and urine.

The researchers gave the subjects a selection of about 150 words to describe the smell.

The researchers focused on two main variations of a gene that controls how the nose detects androstenone.

The variations, known as RT/RT and RT/WM, made up about 60 percent and 25 percent respectively of the study population.

Those in the RT/WM group were the least sensitive to androstenone – 46 percent said they could not smell the compound at its highest concentration.

Among those who could smell the compound, participants in the RT/WM group were more than twice as likely to describe androstenone’s smell as “vanilla” compared to those in the RT/RT group.