Study reveals how smell receptors work

All senses must reckon with the richness of the world, but nothing matches the challenge faced by the olfactory system that underlies our sense of smell. We need only three receptors in our eyes to sense all the colors of ...

Genomic analysis solves the turtle mystery

The turtle has always been considered somewhat odd in evolutionary terms. In addition to lacking the hole in the skull—the temporal fenestra—that is characteristic of the egg-laying amniotes, the structure of its shell ...

Vampire bats help unravel the mystery of smell

The sense of smell is one of the most poorly understood of the five major senses. But now an international team of scientists led by Laurel Yohe of Stony Brook University suggests a new method to quantify olfactory receptors ...

Copper + love chemical = big sulfur stink

When Hiroaki Matsunami, Ph.D., at Duke set out to study a chemical in male mouse urine called MTMT that attracts female mice, he didn't think he would stumble into a new field of study.

A controversial theory of olfaction deemed implausible

Humans can discriminate tens of thousands of odors. While we may take our sense of smell for granted, it adds immeasurably to our quality of life: the aroma of freshly brewed coffee; the invigorating smell of an ocean breeze ...

Researchers find gene critical to sense of smell in fruit fly

(Medical Xpress) -- Fruit flies don't have noses, but a huge part of their brains is dedicated to processing smells. Flies probably rely on the sense of smell more than any other sense for essential activities such as finding ...

How cells in the nose detect odors

The human nose has millions of olfactory neurons grouped into hundreds of different neuron types. Each of these neuron types expresses only one odorant receptor, and all neurons expressing the same odorant receptor plug into ...

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