Vibrational Detection of Odorant Functional Groups by .

A remarkable feature of olfaction, and perhaps the hardest one to explain by shape-based molecular recognition, is the ability to detect the presence of functional groups in odorants, irrespective of molecular context. We previously showed that trained to avoid deuterated odorants could respond to a molecule bearing a nitrile group, which shares the vibrational stretch frequency with the CD bond. Here, we reproduce and extend this finding by showing analogous olfactory responses of to the chemically vastly different functional groups, thiols and boranes, that nevertheless possess a common vibration at 2600 cm.

Differential Electrophysiological Responses to Odorant Isotopologues in Drosophilid Antennae.

Olfaction presents the ultimate challenge to molecular recognition as thousands of molecules have to be recognized by far fewer olfactory receptors. We have presented evidence that Drosophila readily distinguish odorants based on their molecular vibrations using a battery of behavioral assays suggesting engagement of a molecular vibration-sensing component. Here we interrogate electrophysiologically the antennae of four Drosophilids and demonstrate conserved differential response amplitudes to aldehydes, alcohols, ketones, nitriles, and their deuterated isotopologues.

Correction: Molecular Vibration-Sensing Component in Human Olfaction.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Molecular vibration-sensing component in human olfaction.

Whether olfaction recognizes odorants by their shape, their molecular vibrations, or both remains an open and controversial question. A convenient way to address it is to test for odor character differences between deuterated and undeuterated odorant isotopomers, since these have identical ground-state conformations but different vibrational modes. In a previous paper (Franco et al.