Olfamining

Linking molecules to their odors
with supervised descriptive rules discovery


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CNRS INSA de Lyon Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

Understanding the physicochemical determinants of the olfactory percept


While it is generally agreed that the physicochemical characteristics of odorants affect the olfactory percept, no precise rules governing this "chemical structure / odor" relation have yet been determined. One obstacle to this is the large number of dimensions – several thousand – needed to describe the molecules and, above all, a lack of data-processing methods suitable for this level of complexity. Our first objective will therefore make use of the 3 data-bases established as part of the Prevalolf project, correlating the multiple molecular characteristics (olfactory chemical space) to olfactory qualities (fruity, floral, woody, etc.: odor perception space). Methods taken from data mining producing descriptive rules are used to test the hypothesis that certain olfactory qualities, on which there is strong inter-subject agreement, can be predicted from the physicochemical properties of the odorant molecule.

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Implemented contributions


h(odor) WebbApp

Allows the olfaction experts to interact with the discovery algorithm to guide the search in the huge description space thanks to an ergonomic user interface.

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ELMMut algorithm

Finds molecular description
targeting
a subset of olfactory qualities
with the Fβ Score

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State of the art methods


Subgroup Discovery

Finds molecular description
targeting a unique quality

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Redescription Mining

Finds couples (description, qualities)
covering almost the same molecules

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Exceptional Model Mining

Finds molecular descriptions
targeting several qualities

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The idea


Described by physicochemical properties,
some molecules have a perceived odor
Three databases are considered, entailing hundreds of molecules,
with odors associated by experts from a well defined vocabulary
Subgroup discovery consists in finding descriptions of molecules
that are strongly characteristic of a (several) percept(s)
Redescription mining consists in finding couples (description, qualities)
such as both queries support almost the same set of molecules.
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The projects


This research is partially supported by:

  • the CNRS (Préfute PEPS FASCIDO)
  • the Institut rhônalpin des systèmes complexes (IXXI)