Sniffing out disease

Sniffing Out the Right Address

Olfactory systems in organisms ranging from invertebrates to mammals distinguish between odors using an array of olfactory neurons that express different olfactory receptors—usually just one receptor in a given neuron. Since an organism’s genome can encode hundreds of olfactory receptors, researchers have struggled to understand how a single olfactory neuron decides which receptor to express. I...

Sniffing out early reaction intermediates.

P owerful tools for identifying reaction intermediates and byproducts of chemical reactions are crucial for the development of high-yield chemical syntheses, not only for testing theoretical mechanistic models and calculations, but also to obtain improved understanding of reaction mechanisms during trial experiments. This will enable more efficient steering toward optimum yields for a variety o...

Sniffing out Parkinson’s disease Psychophysical and neurophysiological studies of impaired olfactory information processing in Parkinson’s disease

SNIFFING OUT SMELL: Odorant Detection, Coding, and Perception

Smell, the most ancient of all senses, is crucial for animal reproduction and survival. Humans can detect the most minute changes in odorant structures as a different perceived odor. Despite its significance, the mechanism of olfactory sensory perception remained unknown before 1991. Through research in my lab and others, we discovered a large multigene family containing approximately 1000 gene...

Autism Spectrum Disorder: Sniffing Out a New Biomarker

Early intervention improves prognosis in autism spectrum disorder, yet diagnosis is very difficult in preverbal children. A new study demonstrates that the automatic adjustments in sniffing patterns to pleasant and unpleasant odors may provide a window into early diagnosis.