I am old enough to remember when olfactory receptors were discovered, and have written about them a fair few times since then (heck I even have a tag for that). In the new developments in the smell field last year I really liked the way that a clever combination of old and new may provide a breakthrough. Smell has become ridiculously complex and fragile during the evolution of tetrapods (ie since our ancestors stopped being fish and started to grow legs to walk around on land and sniff the air). Now researchers have gone back to reconstruct the simpler and more robust olfactory receptors of early tetrapods, and based on structures obtained for these, it may become easier to predict (eg with alpha fold) and study structures of the receptors we have now.
It's all explained with a bit more detail in my latest feature which is out now:
Chemical communicators
Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 2, 20 January 2025, Pages R45-R47
Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)
Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)
See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.
Last year's thread is here .
In Western culture, the sense of smell is much less valued than vision and hearing. (Photo: vikjam/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).)
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