Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The olfactory system is the sensory system that is responsible for the sense of smell (olfaction). It receives, processes and interprets odour information.
How animals sense and properly avoid predators remains incompletely understood. Here, Jiang et al. show that the B cell co-receptor, CD20 also functions as an olfactory receptor and mediates the innate avoidance of predator derived odors.
How the feedforward information from the nose and feedback from the cortex interact in the olfactory bulb is not fully understood. Here, by imaging olfactory sensory neurons and cortical projections to the olfactory bulb, the authors show that sensory transformations contained within both streams.
LiMCA offers a tool for co-profiling 3D genome structure and gene expression at the single-cell level, enabling researchers to elucidate the olfactory receptor gene selection process.
Some atmospheric pollutants may disrupt chemical communication in insects. Here, the authors show that exposure to elevated ozone disrupts pheromone-mediated mate recognition and increases hybridization in laboratory colonies of four Drosophila species.
This study examines how different odor-learning tasks affect structural plasticity in the olfactory bulb. Sensory deprivation, simple and complex odor learning tasks differently modify the spine density and morphology, revealing tailored plasticity.
Extracellular vesicles are fundamental in cellular communication. Here, authors show how C. elegans pheromones regulate vesicle production, showcasing the impact of social behaviors on cellular mechanisms.
Innate fear-like responses are thought to involve the amygdala, but here a tetra-synaptic pathway is identified that mediates odour-evoked innate fear in mice.
Infant attachment to the mother in rodents and monkeys is shown to rely on regulation of hypothalamic oxytocin release by a serotonergic projection from the raphe nucleus.