The End of Dandruff as We Know It?

Is there anything more annoying than persistent dandruff and the telltale flakes that litter one’s shoulders like so many weeds in a garden? Procter & Gamble recently released information that it had sequenced the complete genome for malassezia globosa, a naturally occurring fungus responsible for the onset of dandruff. This fungus thrives on scalp oil, and what it doesn’t eat negatively effects the scalp, says Thomas Dawson, Ph.D., a scientist at P&G Beauty. Dawson was part of a global team of computer scientists and fungi and genome experts from Vancouver to the Netherlands who for the past eight years have worked on sequencing the genome. Look for their findings to show up in P&G’s Head & Shoulders brand in the not too distant future.