on the origins of smell

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

FREE access to full text and PDF download

See also my Mastodon thread where I highlighted all CB features of 2025.

The thread for 2024 is here .

In Western culture, the sense of smell is much less valued than vision and hearing. (Photo: vikjam/Flickr (CC BY 2.0).)

anosmia gets a boost

Anosmia - the loss of smell - was a neglected condition until Covid-19 came along. Then the loss of smell as a diagnostic criterion, and also as a lingering long-term consequence of the disease rose to prominence. While devastating for all concerned, this sudden increase in awareness of the condition and interest in research into it may have a happy ending in that it could lead to better understanding of the mechanisms and more effective treatments.

So I've taken this silver lining as an opportunity to revisit smell science and Covid, now combined under the banner of anosmia. The resulting feature is out now:

In search of lost smell

Current Biology Volume 32, Issue 14, 25 July 2022, Pages R757-R759

FREE access to full text and PDF download

NB: as the 2022 features move into the open archives, I will add them to this thread on Mastodon.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread loss of smell and thereby led to a renewed scientific interest in anosmia research. (Photo: Mark C. Olsen/New Jersey National Guard.)

licence to smell

The slightly belated roundup of German pieces published in April (there were none in March, I think) includes the whiff of dead people as well as the underappreciated sense of smell of living people, a dead chemist who could have become Bond, the rise and rise of vegetarian mycoprotein products (such as Quorn (TM)), a potential treatment for cataracts, and the question why elephants rarely get cancer.

Wir können besser riechen als wir denken
Chemie in unserer Zeit 2016, 50, 140-143.
Abstract and restricted access to full text

See also my feature in English, which is now on open access.

Grauer Star: Aggregate aufgelöst
Chemie in unserer Zeit 2016, 50, 83.
Abstract and restricted access to full text

Netzwerk Leben: Die Notbremse
Chemie in unserer Zeit 2016, 50, 88-89.
Abstract and restricted access to full text

Mykoprotein als Fleischersatz
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2016, 64, 403-405.
Abstract and restricted access to full text

Beinahe Bond
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2016, 64, 446.
Abstract and restricted access to full text

Ausgeforscht: Ätherisches Nachleben
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2016, 64, 487.
Restricted access to full text

Asifa Majid from Radboud University Nijmegen has studied the smell lexicon of hunter-gatherer societies in South Asia. The photo shows her sampling the smell of wild ginger during a field trip to the Jahai in Malaysia. (Photo: Niclas Burenhult, Lund University, Sweden.)

human smell is not so bad

Our sense of smell has the reputation of being the poor relative to the superior abilities of other mammals such as canines or rodents. However, recent research has shown that it does have some amazing capabilities thanks to the combinatorial power of its hundreds of different chemoreceptors. Moreover, if we're not very good at naming smells or remembering them, that may be due to cultural rather than biological reasons.

Read all about it in my latest feature which has just come out in Current Biology:

Our sense of smell at the crossroads

Current Biology Volume 25, Issue 5, pR173–R176, 2 March 2015

Open access

Sweet osmanthus (Osmanthus fragrans) is a plant appreciated for its fragrance across southern Asia, where it is also used as a food ingredient and in herbal teas. A recent study has identified 23 volatile substances in its odour. (Photo: Laitr Keiows/Wikimedia Commons.)