A Temperature Increase Abolishes Ability of Turtle Olfactory Receptors to Discriminate Odorants with Close Structures

Abstract

The olfactory system can recognize and discriminate multifarious odorant molecules. It has been assumed that responses to odorants are induced by the binding of odorants with specific receptor proteins on olfactory receptor cells [1]. Receptor proteins in biological membranes are surrounded by lipid molecules and, hence, the perturbation of the lipid layers may affect the olfactory responses. If this is true, a temperature change in olfactory cells, which will induce a membrane fluidity change, may affect olfactory responses. In this study, we changed the temperature of the turtle olfactory epithelium by perfusing it with Ringer solutions of different temperatures and examined the effects of the temperature change on the ability of the turtle olfactory system to discriminate odors by applying a cross-adaptation method to the olfactory bulbar responses [2].