Sensory System Analysis

Often, we do not realize just how important our taste and smell senses are to every day life. We go about our day and do the normal human thing. We sleep, eat, shower, get dressed, go to school, work, etc. What if our sense of taste and smell were taken away? How would it change these every day routines? If there were a house fire while we were sleeping and we could not smell the smoke, what would happen? What if we could not taste or smell the food we were eating? What if we could not smell if our bodies were clean when we showered? As a nurse, what if I could not smell a foul odor in regards to urine or

Without any doubt, most essential needs a human has in order for survival is the need to eat and drink. With eating being such a crucial part of human survival, it doesn’t hurt to be able to eat foods or drink liquids that just so happen to taste “good”. In terms of taste, for the most part, nobody wants to intentionally eat foods that do not taste pleasurable. The better tasting the food, the more desirable it may be seen. Some of these foods even can help to give a person a better life. With eating being such a crucial part of survival, it is interesting to understand just how important it is and all the effects it has on the body. In order to understand how the sensation of taste works, the things that must be understood beforehand are how

Tastes and smells are the perception of chemicals in the air. The close relationship with smell and taste helps people perceive the flavors of food. Anyone with a cold has experienced that moment where they can not perceive the flavors of food because their smell has been “impaired” due to a stuffy nose. Taste itself is focused chemicals that have sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or savory taste. “The sense of taste influences food

This allowed us to perform an experiment to test which cellular components of the roundworm were able to detect and react to odors. Utilizing RNA interference, we can knock out or reduce specific gene functions by having the worms consume bacterial food that contained dsRNA. After consumption and reproduction, the construct of RNAi in the presence of the cultivated progeny were observed and determined which gene can be expressed or reduced in chemotaxis. We performed chemotaxis by creating an attractant gradient to a specific point and then observed the accumulation to the chemical signal (Bargmann,

gondii acts primarily on a pathway involved in innate responses to olfactory cues. Cat odors activate neurons in the vomeronasal organ, which projects to the accessory olfactory bulb (AOB). Neurons in AOB project to medial amygdala (MeA) which then projects to ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH). The proposed study will utilize immunohistochemical, optogenetic, and behavioral approaches to determine the involvement of the predator odor pathway in the loss of cat odor aversion as it relates to T. gondii infection. Subjects will be Long-Evans rats, a species in which parasite-induced cat odor attraction is well documented (Berdoy et al., 2000; Webster et al., 2006; Vyas et al.,

These proteins serve as ion channels in yeast, invertebrates, and vertebrates. Once activated, they cause depolarization of the cellular membrane, and result in a change of intracellular Ca2+ .The TRP family breaks down into seven subfamilies, which are TRPC (canonical), TRPV (vanilloid), TRPM (melastatin), TRPP (polycystin), TRPML (mucolipin), TRPA (ankyrin), and TRPN (NOMPC-like) (2). The earliest descriptions of TRP genes were found in the fruit fly (Drosophilia melanogaster). In 1989, Montell and Rubin found the product of the trp gene to be a six-transmembrane-segment protein functioning as a Ca2+ permeable channel. Since then, more than 100 TRP genes have been observed in animals. TRPV found in Homo sapiens consists of 6 members, which are TRPV1, TRPV2, TRPV3, TRPV4, TRPV5, and TRPV6. Of these, there is an abundance of data on the role of TRPV1 channel in inflammatory and neuropathic states

The flies can detect thousands of odor molecules para milliliter of air, but the human needs large size of the air to do so. This is based on self-regulation the fly’s odor receptors. Even when there fewer molecules below the response rate, a fly can amplify the sensitivity of the receptors and the binding molecules thus triggering the opening of an ion channel.

The taste buds are not the only thing that makes you be able to taste foods. Olfactory receptors, which are located in the uppermost part of your nose, contains special cells that help you smell. These receptors also send messages to the brain. While you are chewing, the food releases chemicals that immediately travel up into your nose. These chemicals trigger the olfactory receptors inside the nose. So your nose and your taste buds work together to send messages to the brain to determine if something is sweet, salty, sour, or bitter.

Our research on Caenorhabditis elegans provides a foundation for exploration of pathogen avoidance using chemical signals, olfactory senses, and chemosensory neuron pathways as observed through chemotaxis. Our binary methodological studies on worm movement allowed us to further explore bacterial preference in both wild type and mutated C. elegans by exposing the worms to known worm pathogenic bacteria, Serratia marsescens, to control bacteria B. thuringiensis. The question being tested is whether a mutation in an odor-receptor gene, one of the few genes responsible for olfaction and distinction of received chemical signals, will

The N-terminal of T1R2s extracellular domains functions in a similar manner to that of a Venus Flytrap. The N-terminal is necessary for the detection of sweeteners, such as aspartame. The T1R3’s C-terminal domain plays a vital role in recognizing additional sweeteners, such as cyclamate, and surprisingly the sweet taste inhibitor lactisole (9). Research and experimentation concludes that a dimer of T1R1 and T1R3 has the ability to detect L-amino acids, which constitute umami tastes. Furthermore, sweet tastes are sensed by the T1R2 and T1R3 dimer (11). T1R3s are used with sweet and umami taste receptors. Buried within the transmemrane helices are the binding sites of T2Rs. This characteristic allows them to be suitable for detecting nonpolar, bitter tastants. Structural differences between T1Rs and T2Rs allow each of them to uniquely bind to the varying tastes (Figure

Have you ever wondered why nothing tastes good when you have a cold? Or why holding your nose helps yucky foods go down easier. Those tiny bumps on your tongue are called taste buds. They hold the key to discovering what is yummy or yucky. Your taste buds allow you to taste the 4 simple flavors. Sour, sweet, salty and bitter.Your nose holds the sense of smell. If we don’t have the ability to smell, it can be harder to tell the difference between most foods. In fact, scientist say that most of our sense of taste is actually smell. Your ability to discriminate between many different smells makes your sense of taste even stronger.

C. elegans is an attractive model system having behavioural plasticity towards various stimuli. The organism can learn and perceive the clues to maintain as both short term and long term memory as well as imprinted memory. Imprinting is a type of epigenetic learning which gather an internal exposition of an event and occurs without any previous experience that has a reference in the brain. In C. elegans olfactory imprinting occurs through AWC sensory neurons and AIY interneurons. Sra-11, a G-protein coupled seven transmembrane receptor expressed in AIY interneurons is essential for the formation of olfactory imprinting. Olfactory learning in the nematodes also shares AWC and AIY interneurons through CREB and its downstream pathways. Here we