Muscone
Synthetic Ingredient for Perfumery
Muscone is a synthetic musk with a soft, sweet, and robust musky fragrance, derived from the primary odor component of natural musk. As a 15-membered ring ketone, its chemical synthesis preserves the endangered musk deer while providing a consistent, animal-free musky scent. Used primarily in luxury perfumes, its potency is best expressed when diluted, revealing a warm, non-animal musky aroma with high tenacity.
Synthetic Ingredient for Perfumery
Muscone is a synthetic musk with a soft, sweet, and robust musky fragrance, derived from the primary odor component of natural musk. As a 15-membered ring ketone, its chemical synthesis preserves the endangered musk deer while providing a consistent, animal-free musky scent. Used primarily in luxury perfumes, its potency is best expressed when diluted, revealing a warm, non-animal musky aroma with high tenacity.
Synthetic Ingredient for Perfumery
Muscone is a synthetic musk with a soft, sweet, and robust musky fragrance, derived from the primary odor component of natural musk. As a 15-membered ring ketone, its chemical synthesis preserves the endangered musk deer while providing a consistent, animal-free musky scent. Used primarily in luxury perfumes, its potency is best expressed when diluted, revealing a warm, non-animal musky aroma with high tenacity.
Muscone is an organic compound that is the primary contributor to the odor of musk. The chemical structure of muscone was first elucidated by Lavoslav Ruzička. It consists of a 15-membered ring ketone with one methyl substituent in the 3-position.
White or colorless or a matte crystalline mass. When heated it is a liquid, colorless and viscous. The boiling point is higher than 300°C (328°)
Almost insoluble in water, soluble in alcohol and oils.
Very soft, sweet, and extremely tenacious, musky, but not animal, odor. The power is only fully realized when the material is diluted.
Almost insoluble in water, soluble in alcohol and oils.
It is an oily liquid that is found naturally as the (-)-enantiomer, (R)-3-methylcyclopentadecanone. Muscone has been synthesized as the pure (-)-enantiomer as well as the racemate. It is very slightly soluble in water and miscible with alcohol. Natural muscone is obtained from musk, a glandular secretion of the musk deer, which has been used in perfumery and medicine for thousands of years. Since obtaining natural musk requires killing the endangered animal, nearly all muscone used in perfumery today is synthetic. It has the characteristic smell of being "Musky".
Very soft, sweet, and extremely tenacious, musky, but not animal, odor. The power is only fully realized when the material is diluted.
An alcoholic solution containing 0.10% Muscone smells strongly of the material, not of alcohol. This is typical of the truly superior fixatives, including Exaltolide and Ambrettolide, and several of the new Oxalactone-musks.
Natural Muscone is laevo-Muscone, while synthetic MuScone is racemic or dl-Muscone.
14 grams of Muscone equals the Muscone content in 1 kg of natural mass grains.
Needless to add the Muscone does not constitute the entire odor or fragrance power of natural musk, but if musk tincture is used mainly for its tenacity, this part of its action can be replaced by a certain amount of Muscone. The cost of fixation is considerably reduced by this replacement, since synthetic Muscone costs less than natural musk grains (approximate market price Sept. 1968 = U.S. $ 5,000,- per kilo), and the amount of Muscone needed is 50 to 75 times less than that of Musk grains. However, the perfumer, experienced in the use of Musk Tincture, will undoubtedly agree, that the exchange proportion is not quite so favorable to MuScone as the calculated figures may indicate. Such experience resembles the findings when the flavourist tries to replace Vanilla tincture with Vanillin.
Although Muscone is non-existing in many perfume laboratories, it is used discretely in a large number of fine perfumes. It takes considerable experimenting and time-consuming study of the finished (functional) products to fully estimate the effect of Muscone in a fragrance. It performs best when the perfumed product is applied to the human skin and is therefore mainly found in luxury perfumes, powder perfumes, creme perfumes, etc., but rarely in bath oils, etc.
Profile:
📂 CAS N° 541-91-3
⚖️ MW: 238,41 g/mol
📝 Odor Type: Musk
📈 Odor Strength: high, recommend smelling in a 10.00 % solution. Stays 400hrs on paper.
👃🏼 Odor Profile: sweet musk animal powdery fatty natural very soft, sweet, musky odor with a warm animal tonality, reminiscent of the natural Tonkin musk
👅 Flavor Profile: sweet, musk-like, perfume, soapy with woody and bitter nuances
⚗️ Uses: It can be used to give elegant and warm animal notes and adds lift and diffusion to any perfume. Important for the reconstitution of natural musk. suggested usage 2% in fragrance concentrate.
Production:
One asymmetric synthesis of (-)-muscone begins with commercially available (+)-citronellal and forms the 15-membered ring via ring-closing metathesis.
A more recent enantioselective synthesis involves an intramolecular aldol addition/dehydration reaction of a macrocyclic diketone. Muscone is now produced synthetically for use in perfumes and for scenting consumer products.
Isotopologues of muscone have been used in a study of the mechanism of olfaction. Global replacement of all hydrogens in muscone was achieved by heating muscone with Rh/C in D2O at 150 °C. It was found that the human musk-recognizing receptor, OR5AN1, identified using a heterologous olfactory receptor expression system and robustly responding to muscone, fails to distinguish between muscone and the so-prepared isotopologue in vitro. OR5AN1 is reported to bind to muscone and related musks such as civetone through the hydrogen-bond formation from tyrosine-258 along with hydrophobic interactions with surrounding aromatic residues in the receptor.
Sources:
Fulvio Ciccolo, 2020
Perfume and flavor chemicals — S Arctander, 1969
Wikipedia, Muscone
