PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Monell scientists identify critical link in mammalian odor detection

Knockout of Ggamma13 leads to anosmia in mice

2013-05-07
(Press-News.org) PHILADELPHIA (May 6, 2013) – Researchers at the Monell Center and collaborators have identified a protein that is critical to the ability of mammals to smell. Mice engineered to be lacking the Ggamma13 protein in their olfactory receptors were functionally anosmic – unable to smell. The findings may lend insight into the underlying causes of certain smell disorders in humans.

"Without Ggamma13, the mice cannot smell," said senior author Liquan Huang, PhD, a molecular biologist at Monell. "This raises the possibility that mutations in the Ggamma13 gene may contribute to certain forms of human anosmia and that gene sequencing may be able to predict some instances of smell loss."

Odor molecules entering the nose are sensed by a family of olfactory receptors. Inside the receptor cells, a complex cascade of molecular interactions converts information to ultimately generate an electrical signal. This signal, called an action potential, is what tells the brain that an odor has been detected.

To date, the identities of some of the intracellular molecules that convert odor information into an action potential remain a mystery. Suspecting that a protein called Ggamma13 might be involved, the research team engineered mice to be lacking this protein and then tested how the 'knockout' mice responded to odors.

Importantly, because the Ggamma13 protein plays critical roles in other parts of the body, the Ggamma13 'knockout' was confined exclusively to smell receptor cells. This specificity allowed the researchers to characterize the effect of Ggamma13 deletion on the olfactory system without interference from changes in other tissues.

Both behavioral and physiological experiments revealed that the Ggamma13 knockout mice did not respond to odors. The findings were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

In behavioral tests, control mice with an intact sense of smell were able to detect and retrieve a piece of buried food in less than 30 seconds. However, mice lacking Ggamma13 in their olfactory cells required more than 8 minutes to perform the same task. Both sets of mice were able to quickly locate the food when it was placed in plain sight.

A second set of experiments measured olfactory function on a physiological level. Using olfactory tissue from knockout and control mice, the researchers recorded electrical responses to 15 different odors. Responses from the Ggamma13 knockout mice were greatly reduced, suggesting that the olfactory receptors of these mice were unable to translate odor signals into an electrical response.

Together, the findings demonstrate that Ggamma13 is essential for mammals to smell odors and extend the current understanding of how olfactory receptor cells communicate information about odors to the brain. Future studies will seek to identify how Ggamma13 interacts with other molecules within the olfactory receptor.

"Loss of olfactory function can greatly reduce quality of life," said Huang. "Our findings demonstrate the significant consequences when just one molecular component of this complex system does not function properly."

Also contributing to the research were lead author Feng Li, Samusudeen Ponissery-Saidu, Karen Yee, Hong Wang, Naoko Iguchi, and Johannes Reisert from Monell; Meng-Ling Chen and Genhua Zhang from the Changshu Institute of Technology in China; and Ping Jiang from the Wistar Institute. The research was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health, under award numbers R01DC007487, R01DC009613, and DC010012, and core facility grant P30 DC011735. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Additional funding came from National Science Foundation Equipment Grant DBI-0216310 and National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant 31228008.

INFORMATION:

The Monell Chemical Senses Center is an independent nonprofit basic research institute based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Now celebrating its 45th anniversary, Monell advances scientific understanding of the mechanisms and functions of taste and smell to benefit human health and well-being. Using an interdisciplinary approach, scientists collaborate in program areas of sensation and perception; neuroscience and molecular biology; environmental and occupational health; nutrition and appetite; health and well-being; development, aging and regeneration; and chemical ecology and communication. For more information about Monell, visit http://www.monell.org.

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

May 2013 story tips from Oak Ridge National Laboratory

2013-05-07
POWER GRID – Preparing for natural disasters . . . Software developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory can help emergency responders predict where power outages are likely when a storm hits, which can minimize the amount of time people are in the dark. The fully automated system uses wind speed and location estimates to geospatially map the impact to the electric grid, allowing planners who would otherwise have to perform tedious manual processing to focus on other tasks. A paper outlining the research was presented at a recent Institute of Electrical and Electronics ...

Millions pass up free health subsidy

2013-05-07
Millions of seniors are turning down free money. The Low Income Subsidy for Medicare Part D is a rare beast in economics research. The subsidy provides prescription drug coverage essentially free for low-income adults. That means it is what economists call a dominant option. For those who are eligible, there is no rational reason not to choose it. And yet, a new study shows that many eligible seniors do not take advantage of the program, despite outreach efforts by the Social Security Administration. "We examined the role of seniors' cognitive abilities in explaining ...

Increase in medical treatment caused greatest increase in US health care costs

2013-05-07
The increasing proportion of the population that received treatment for a specific medical condition – called "treated disease prevalence" -- along with higher spending per treated case accounted for most of the rise in health care spending in the U.S. between 1987 and 2009, according to a recent analysis. In the analysis, published in the May edition of Health Affairs, Kenneth E. Thorpe, PhD, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Emory's Rollins School of Public Health, analyzed data from the National Medical Expenditure Survey and the Medical Expenditure ...

Traumatized moms avoid tough talks with kids, Notre Dame study shows

2013-05-07
Mothers who have experienced childhood abuse, neglect or other traumatic experiences show an unwillingness to talk with their children about the child's emotional experiences, a new study from the University of Notre Dame shows. According to the study, which was presented at the Society for Research in Child Development 2013 Biennial Meeting in Seattle, a sample of low-income mothers who had experienced their own childhood traumas exhibited ongoing "traumatic avoidance symptoms," which is characterized by an unwillingness to address thoughts, emotions, sensations or memories ...

Satellite animation shows smoke from California's Springs fire

2013-05-07
VIDEO: On May 3, 2013, the GOES infrared and visible imagery were combined to create an animation that showed the plume of smoke from California's Springs fire. The smoke plume is... Click here for more information. On May 3, 2013, the NOAA GOES infrared and visible imagery were combined to create an animation that showed the plume of smoke from the fire. The smoke plume is seen blowing west and out over the eastern Pacific Ocean. The animation runs 17 seconds and shows the ...

Landsat thermal sensor lights up from volcano's heat

2013-05-07
As the Landsat Data Continuity Mission satellite flew over Indonesia's Flores Sea April 29, it captured an image of Paluweh volcano spewing ash into the air. The satellite's Operational Land Imager detected the white cloud of smoke and ash drifting northwest, over the green forests of the island and the blue waters of the tropical sea. The Thermal Infrared Sensor on LDCM picked up even more. By imaging the heat emanating from the 5-mile-wide volcanic island, TIRS revealed a hot spot at the top of the volcano where lava has been oozing in recent months. The two LDCM ...

Entomologist names new wasp species after UC Riverside

2013-05-07
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — An entomologist at the University of California, Riverside discovered a new wasp species in Russia and named it after the university, commonly abbreviated as UCR. Serguei V. Triapitsyn, principal museum scientist at the Entomology Research Museum on campus, had been sorting wasps from the Russian Far East, when he discovered several tiny female fairyflies, or mymarid wasps, 1.1 to 1.2 millimeters in body length. He named the species Gonatocerus ucri in a research paper he published April 30 in the international scientific journal Zootaxa. A Russian ...

Satellite captures night-time image of California's Springs fire

2013-05-07
From its orbit around the Earth, the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite or Suomi NPP satellite, captured a night-time image of California's Springs Fire. The Suomi NPP satellite carries an instrument so sensitive to low light levels that it can detect wildfires in the middle of the night. The Day/Night band on Suomi/NPP produces Night-Time visible imagery using illumination from natural (the moon, forest fires) and man-made sources (city lights, gas flares). On May 3 and 4, 2013, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi-NPP ...

Sleep problems may increase risk for prostate cancer

2013-05-07
PHILADELPHIA — Men who reported sleep problems, including difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep, had up to a twofold increased risk for prostate cancer, according to data published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Sleep problems are very common in modern society and can have adverse health consequences," said Lara G. Sigurdardóttir, M.D., at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. "Women with sleep disruption have consistently been reported to be at an increased risk for breast cancer, ...

Promising strategies to reduce use of indoor tanning devices and prevent skin cancer

2013-05-07
San Diego, CA, May 7, 2013 – Preventing skin cancer by reducing use of indoor tanning devices requires a coordinated approach at the national, state, and local levels suggests a pair of papers by CDC authors in a special theme issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Evidence has shown that use of indoor tanning devices increases the risk of developing skin cancer, including melanoma, and these papers discuss approaches that could help reduce use of indoor tanning devices and prevent future incidence of skin cancers. Melanoma is one of the most commonly ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

What are they vaping? Study reveals alarming surge in adolescent vaping of THC, CBD, and synthetic cannabinoids

ECMWF - delivering forecasts over 10 times faster and cutting energy usage by 1000

Brazilian neuroscientist reveals how viral infections transform the brain through microscopic detective work

Turning social fragmentation into action through discovering relatedness

Cheese may really be giving you nightmares, scientists find

Study reveals most common medical emergencies in schools

Breathable yet protective: Next-gen medical textiles with micro/nano networks

Frequency-engineered MXene supercapacitors enable efficient pulse charging in TENG–SC hybrid systems

Developed an AI-based classification system for facial pigmented lesions

Achieving 20% efficiency in halogen-free organic solar cells via isomeric additive-mediated sequential processing

New book Terraglossia reclaims language, Country and culture

The most effective diabetes drugs don't reach enough patients yet

Breast cancer risk in younger women may be influenced by hormone therapy

Strategies for staying smoke-free after rehab

Commentary questions the potential benefit of levothyroxine treatment of mild hypothyroidism during pregnancy

Study projects over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 if USAID defunding continues

New study reveals 33% gap in transplant access for UK’s poorest children

Dysregulated epigenetic memory in early embryos offers new clues to the inheritance of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)

IVF and IUI pregnancy rates remain stable across Europe, despite an increasing uptake of single embryo transfer

It takes a village: Chimpanzee babies do better when their moms have social connections

From lab to market: how renewable polymers could transform medicine

Striking increase in obesity observed among youth between 2011 and 2023

No evidence that medications trigger microscopic colitis in older adults

NYUAD researchers find link between brain growth and mental health disorders

Aging-related inflammation is not universal across human populations, new study finds

University of Oregon to create national children’s mental health center with $11 million federal grant

Rare achievement: UTA undergrad publishes research

Fact or fiction? The ADHD info dilemma

Genetic ancestry linked to risk of severe dengue

Genomes reveal the Norwegian lemming as one of the youngest mammal species

[Press-News.org] Monell scientists identify critical link in mammalian odor detection
Knockout of Ggamma13 leads to anosmia in mice