'Fossil genes' reveal how life sheds form and function
...more on sight as color vision displaced a sense of smell that, in the distant past, was far superior to what humans enjoy today. In the Japanese yeast, the seven fossil genes that make up the eroding pathway are "still in the same place (on the genome) they are in neighboring species," says Carroll. "What ...Green, leafy spinach may soon power cellphones and laptops
...in the cell. The resulting dark green pellets that smell like cut grass were purified still further and coaxed into a water-soluble state. One of the challenges was to keep the proteins in the same configuration as they appear naturally in the organism. Here's where peptides come in. The 80,000-p...Wrapping a memory with an experience, capacity for recollection detected in non-human species
...hat capitalized on rats' highly developed sense of smell as well as instinctual foraging behavior. Initially, the rats explored a "list" of 10 common household odors (for example, cinnamon, oregano, coffee, chocolate), each mixed in ordinary sand that hid a buried food reward. Following a 30-minute reten...Essential smell gene may provide key to new insect repellents
Insects navigate by smell to find food, mates and -- in the case of disease-...is for designing insect repellents." An anomalous smell receptor The sense of smell is very direct. In order for humans or fruit flies to smell bananas, fo...New clues to hereditary blinding disease found
...rous functions in the body including sight, taste, smell and many important hormonal responses in the body. "Rhodopsin is a prototypical G-protein coupled receptor," said Aleksandar Stojanovic, a graduate student at DMS who co-authored the article with Hwa and Jeremiah Stitham at DMS. "The fact that it i......ical signal or pheromone to attractmales. Insects smell through their antennae. Inside the antennae, phero...al that specifically blocks the enzyme, they could smell thepheromone at first but then could not reset their antennae. They wereunable to smell new doses ph...Why some animals have smaller eyes: Lifestyle matters
...e things are dark, but where the shrew's senses of smell and touch are more important [than vision] for making a living."Or the carnival barker could simply measure eye size, which is what Merola did for some dissected specimens, while she and Basarab scanned the scientific literature for weight-and-size i...Virginia Tech's smelly 'corpse plant' due to bloom Aug. 4
...s, so visitors will have to be vigilant to see and smell it. A flowering stalk can be seven to 12 feet in height and three to four feet in diameter. After the bloom dies, a leaf stalk resembling a tree sapling will begin to emerge. The plant was first discovered in 1878 in Indonesia, first cultivated at th...Environment influences learning: U of T study
...es treated with a salt medium, exposed them to the smell of benzaldehyde and trained them to associate the smell with starvation. If a worm was returned to the salt medium where it had been trained, it showed a di...Study: Artificial sweetener may disrupt body's ability to count calories
...when they heard it - even when they did not see or smell food. Davidson and Swithers propose that rats learn a similar relationship between the taste or texture of a food and the calories it contains and may use this information to control food intake and body weight. Davidson and Swithers' findings are ba...A fly's taste experience is much like our own
...the taste system of flies is much simpler than the smell or olfactory sensory system. The latter uses 50 different odor detectors to discriminate among thousands of smells, while the 68 taste receptors are reduced to only a few different taste categories in the fly brain. Taste is geared mainly to locating...Nation's plant database falling behind, survey shows
EAST LANSING, Mich. Stopping to smell the roses may be laudable, but more people need to be picking, preserving and cataloging them. Smelling doesn't build and maintain a rich and necessary documentation of the nation's biodiversity. A drop-off in collecting plants threatens the ...Chemical reaction in birds provides sense of direction during migratory flights
...ain. Unlike our senses involving vision, hearing, smell and touch, we do not know what receptors underlie magnetoreception, Ritz said. Migratory birds have long been known to possess a magnetic compass that helps them find the correct direction during their migratory flights. It has remained unknown, howe...Could vitamins raise levels of bad cholesterol? Animal study suggests they might
...dation products (these compounds produce the nasty smell of rancid fish) and stimulated the PERPP pathway. In addition to the studies with liver cells in laboratory dishes, they also demonstrated the relationship between lipid peroxidation and reduced production of bad lipoproteins in living mice. Dr...UC San Diego bioinformatics experts help reconstruct the genomic makeup of our ancestors
... of genes have been expanded in the rat, including smell receptors and genes for dealing with toxins, and these give clues to the distinctive physiology of the species. "The rat genome allows us to reconstruct the genome's architecture, especially for the sex X chromosome, which doesn't exchange genetic ma...AChemS: Cutting edge research in taste, smell, & chemical irritation
... senses. Thousands of Americans experience loss of smell or taste each year resulting from head trauma, sin... to improvements in the diagnoses and treatment of smell and taste disorders. Among those contributing to advancements are members of AChemS, which will be h...Laboratory rat gene sequencing completed
... of genes have been expanded in the rat, including smell receptors and genes for dealing with toxins, and these give clues to the distinctive physiology of the species. Current examples of use of the rat in human medical research include surgery, transplantation, cancer, diabetes, psychiatric disorders in...Bioreactor boosts chemical fermentation by 50 percent: study
... Aside from giving Swiss cheese its characteristic smell and flavor, propionic acid is often used as a preservative and flavor enhancer for a wide variety of cheeses and baked goods. In the chemical industries, it's used as an ingredient for dyes, perfumes, pharmaceuticals, herbicides, rubber, and p...Researchers show chronic sinusitis is immune disorder; antifungal medicine effective treatment
...stion, production of thick mucus, loss of sense of smell and creates an environment for opportunistic bacterial infections that exacerbate those symptoms. Sherris said studies have shown that chronic sinusitis exceeds even congestive heart failure in its adverse effects on quality of life. Little is know...Rockefeller University scientists take on controversial 'vibration theory' of smell
...ller University have put a controversial theory of smell to the sniff test and have found no evidence to su...way to look at a chemical and predict what it will smell like. This is different from other sensory stimuli that are defined by simple physical properties. C...