What’s that smell?

Yeast That Smell

The fundamental mechanism of olfactory receptor activation has been conserved from yeast to humans. Engineered yeast cells can smell some of the same odorants as humans can, which makes yeast an ideal model system for studying human olfaction. Furthermore, if engineered yeast cells are incorporated into sensory arrays, they can be used as biosensors or artificial noses.

What's That Smell?

In philosophical discussions of the secondary qualities, color has taken center stage. Smells, tastes, sounds, and feels have been treated, by and large, as mere accessories to colors. We are, as it is said, visual creatures. This, at least, has been the working assumption in the philosophy of perception and in those metaphysical discussions about the nature of the secondary qualities. The resu...

A Smell That Causes Seizure

In mammals, odorants are detected by a large family of receptors that are each expressed in just a small subset of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs). Here we describe a strain of transgenic mice engineered to express an octanal receptor in almost all OSNs. Remarkably, octanal triggered a striking and involuntary phenotype in these animals, with passive exposure regularly inducing seizures. Octan...

To smell or not to smell? That is the question!

The Smell, that Forgotten Sense

A single particle of a certain fragrance is able to open the appetite, announce danger, arouse sexual desire, evoke the most remote sensations, and recall experiences and/or emotions of the distant past. But speaking of odors, it is interesting to say that each being has the genes that code the receptors of their smell and those that code for the odors emanating from their body. The genetic var...