The olfactory sensitivity of five male CD-1 mice (Mus musculus) for six amino acids was determined using an operant conditioning paradigm. All animals significantly distinguished dilutions as low as 0.01 mM L-cysteine, 3.3 mM L-methionine, 10 mM L-proline, 0.03 mM D-cysteine, 0.3 mM D-methionine and 10 mM D-proline from the odorless solvent, with individual animals displaying even lower detection thresholds. Among the three different L-forms of the amino acids the mice were most sensitive for cysteine and least sensitive for proline, and among the three D-forms the animals displayed a lower sensitivity for D-proline compared to D-cysteine and D-methionine. A comparison between the present data and results obtained with other species showed that the CD-1 mice displayed a higher sensitivity than human subjects and spider monkeys with three (L-Cysteine, D-cysteine and L-proline) of the six amino acids. Results from this report support the idea that the number of functional olfactory receptor genes is not suitable to predict a species’ olfactory sensitivity.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-56783 |
Date | January 2010 |
Creators | Wallén, Helena |
Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för fysik, kemi och biologi |
Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis, text |
Format | application/pdf |
Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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