The sense of smell is a primal sense for humans as well as animals.In everyday life the smells encountered are composed of dozens, even hundreds of odors; few arise from a single odorant. Enormous numbers of odors occur due to the vast variation in the concentration, size and structure of odorant molecules that makes olfaction differ from simpler visual or auditory dimensions. Accordingly, little is known about the ways in which changes in molecular structure and concentration of individual odorants change odor quality. Also, currently not much is understood about synergism/antagonism, how one odorant masks or suppresses another in mixtures and there is no method for predicting which odor will be suppressed. The two main objectives of this thesis were to determine whether a part of a molecular structure rather than the whole structure plays a key role in odor quality and whether a key part of a molecule can be used to choose antagonists for that odorant. For this study three classes of musks and two potential antagonists were used. The results of the study are discussed in some detail. It is concluded that future studies of the importance of molecular structure in mixture interactions require substantially more information on the relation between structure and odor quality to allow systematic studies to be developed. In summary the two hypotheses investigated were not supported by the results. Importantly, however, they do support the view that it is likely that odor quality is dependent on the whole structure of an odorant not a single feature. / Master of Science (Hons)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/182173 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Legha, Prem, University of Western Sydney, College of Science, Technology and Environment, School of Science, Food and Horticulture |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Source | THESIS_CSTE_SFH_Legha_P.xml |
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