All living organisms in the world share one universal sense throughout, i.e., Olfaction, also known as the ability to detect chemical substances without odor. The senses’ importance for an organism's survival is different across species. But usually, the more important the organisms, the more sophisticated structures evolve to ring forth information regarding odors and smells. Within insects, olfaction is responsible for a lot of social and sexual behavior, which makes the species’ chemosensing arsenal to be quite diverse, including numerous genes encoding olfactory receptors tuned at particular ligands or compounds.
In regards to the olfactory organs of insects, a research team has a made a particularly interesting discovery. New research published wherein a team studied core elements of the insect olfactory system demonstrated that the knowledge might be beneficial against fighting insects and further for using them to one’s own advantage. The research could be of huge potential within the natural Ingredient Insect Repellent Market as it would help scientists design insect repellents that are more appropriate for use and more effective as well.
The team stated that the interaction of science with the insect world is of utmost economic importance. Insects can be of great benefit to us as pollinators and producers of food substances, while they can also be our worst enemies as vectors of dangerous infections, agricultural pests, etc. The team, during their experiments, realized that their sense of smell is an important factor determining their behavior.
Meanwhile, the giant diversity of insect chemoreceptors can have possible applications in the development of many new scientific approaches such as drug screening. The paradoxical nature of the problem, however, is that team is still unable to determine the general picture of olfaction mechanisms within insects.
The researchers provided that in their studies, they found that the functional “tuning” of the chemoreceptor, for instance, its responsiveness and sensitivity and perhaps also the signal transduction mechanism relies upon the insect's ligand-binding suit dramatically. The findings denote that the OR family of receptors is extremely diverse in its molecular functioning structures.
As per the team, the findings suggested by their research are extremely relevant for the development of repellent design ad drug screening. However, the point to note is that research efforts should only be kept towards specific receptors of particular insect species. This is because it is not completely possible to be guided by observations and conclusions made upon the Drosphila model.
Further, the team stated that insect chemoreceptors would be applicable for mammalian chemogenetics, and they will soon be testing a much bigger palette of receptors in the primary culture of electroexcitable cells.