While smell plays a considerable role in the social interactions of humans—for instance, signaling fear or generating closeness—for ants, it is vitally important. Researchers from New York University and the University ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 7, 2024
0
44
Whether it's the wafting aroma of our favorite meal or the dangerous fumes seeping from a toxic chemical, the human sense of smell has evolved into a sophisticated system that processes scents through several intricate stages. ...
Plants & Animals
May 21, 2024
0
37
Breaking a longstanding impasse in our understanding of olfaction, scientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF) have created the first molecular-level, 3D picture of how an odor molecule activates a human odorant receptor, a crucial ...
Biochemistry
Mar 15, 2023
0
58
In a bid to understand why mosquitoes may be more attracted to one human than another, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have mapped specialized receptors on the insects' nerve cells that are able to fine-tune their ...
Cell & Microbiology
Feb 21, 2023
0
92
Graphene-based olfactory sensors that can detect odor molecules based on the design of peptide sequences were recently demonstrated by researchers at Tokyo Tech. The findings indicated that graphene field-effect transistors ...
Bio & Medicine
Jan 19, 2023
0
12
If you had the grooming habits of a Neanderthal, perhaps it's a good thing your nose wasn't as sensitive to urine and sweat as a modern human's.
Evolution
Jan 5, 2023
1
1034
When female mosquitoes are looking for a human to bite, they smell a unique cocktail of body odors that we emit into the air. These odors then stimulate receptors in the mosquitoes' antenna. Scientists have tried deleting ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 18, 2022
0
53
Soil-dwelling nematodes depend on their sophisticated sense of smell for survival, able to distinguish between more than a thousand different scents—but the molecular mechanism behind their olfaction has baffled scientists ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 3, 2022
0
300
In what they call surprise findings, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists report that unlike those in fruit flies, mosquitoes' odor sensing nerve cells shut down when those cells are forced to produce odor-related proteins, ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 16, 2022
0
49
Variations in the genes for the newly discovered scent receptors for musk and underarm odor add to a growing body of research suggesting that humans' sense of smell is gradually becoming less sensitive. Sijia Wang of the ...
Evolution
Feb 3, 2022
1
325
