Homothallism (self-fertility) describes a wide variety of sexual strategies that enable a fungus to reproduce in the absence of a mating partner. Unisexual reproduction, a form of homothallism, is a process whereby a fungus can progress through sexual reproduction in the absence of mating genes previously considered essential for self-fertility. In this study, we consider the molecular mechanis...

Pheromones have been shown to induce sexually dimorphic responses in LH secretion. Here we asked whether the sexually dimorphic population of kisspeptin neurons in the rostral periventricular area of the third ventricle (RP3V) could relay sexually dimorphic information from the olfactory systems to the GnRH system. Furthermore, we analyzed the effects of aromatase mutation (ArKO) and thus the r...

Introduction Conjugation between two haploid yeast cells is generally controlled by the reciprocal action of diffusible mating factors, cells of each mating type releasing peptide pheromones that induce mating-specific changes in cells of the opposite type. The pheromones bind to specific receptors at the surface of their target cell and binding initiates a series of intracellular events that l...

All networks tend to become a lot of and a lot of difficult. They’ll be wired, with several routers, or wireless, with several mobile nodes, the matter remains the same: so as to induce the best from the network, there's a requirement to search out the shortest path. The a lot of difficult the network is, the harder it's to manage the routes and indicate which one is that the best. The ants, in...

Studies on projection of the sensory neurons onto the olfactory bulb in fish have revealed a clear subdivision into spatially different areas that each responded specifically to different classes of odorants. Amino acids induce activity in the lateral part, bile salts induce activity in the medial part, and alarm substances induce activity in the posterior part of the medial olfactory bulb. In ...

In 1991, at a conference sponsored by a fragrance company called the Erox Corporation, two University of Utah scientists presented research on a tantalizing pair of chemical compounds provided by the company. They reported that in a few dozen human volunteers, the molecules androstadienone and estratetraenol activated the vomeronasal organ (VNO)an olfactory organ that senses pheromones in many...

Pheromone receptors (PRs) are essential in moths to detect sex pheromones for mate finding. However, it remains unknown from which ancestral proteins these specialized receptors arose. The oldest lineages of moths, so-called non-ditrysian moths, use short-chain pheromone components, secondary alcohols, or ketones, so called Type 0 pheromones that are similar to many common plant volatiles. It i...

Most tetrapods, the group of vertebrates that includes amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, possess separate olfactory and vomeronasal systems. Why? What are the functions of these two anatomically distinct chemosensory systems? Although the vomeronasal system is often presumed to be specialized for mediating responses to pheromones and the olfactory system assumed to respond to “general odorants...

Chemical signals are omnipresent in sexual communication in the vast majority of living organisms. The traditional paradigm was that their main purpose in sexual behaviour was to coordinate mate and species recognition and thus pheromones were conserved in structure and function. In recent years, this view has been challenged by theoretical analyses on the evolution of pheromones and empirical ...

BACKGROUND The prenatal migration of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurosecretory neurons allows nutrients and human pheromones to alter GnRH pulsatility, which modulates the concurrent maturation of the neuroendocrine, reproductive, and central nervous systems, thus influencing the development of ingestive behavior, reproductive sexual behavior, and other behaviors. METHODS THIS MODE...