The nose is known as the sense of smell. Recent research has found that scent receptors are also found in the organs of the heart, lungs, and bloodstream.
"But does this mean, for example your heart can smell the steak aroma that you eat? We do not know the answer to that question," said Peter Schieberle, food chemist at the Technical University of Munich and director of the German Research Center for Food Chemistry.
Schieberle and his colleagues published a study in the American Chemical Society meeting in New Orleans, on April 7, 2013. Indeed, when the air of chemical compounds from food and other substances get into the nose, these molecules bind to scent receptors. That triggers a cascade to tell the brain, what it smells.
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| Researchers have found scent receptors in the heart and other places outside the nose. (Picture from: http://www.livescience.com/) |
During this time, the receptor is considered only in the mucous tissue in the back of the nose. But more and more evidence to suggest that other organs also have it. For example, sperm cells are known to have smell receptors. It is used to help the sperm to find the egg. And now emerging evidence that these receptors are also found in the lungs, heart, and blood.
Schieberle and his colleagues recently found human blood cells are attractive molecules associated with a particular smell. "When scientists put blood cells on one side of the space bounded by the odor compounds on the other hand, the blood cells will migrate in the direction of the smell.
Unclear whether the odor compounds work the same way in the body as you would on the nose. Schieberle sensomics working in the field, which is trying to understand the aroma compounds important for flavor and odor to humans. Sensomics help explain what makes food taste and smell can arouse or even not at all. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | LIVESCIENCE | ISMI WAHID | KORAN TEMPO 4201]
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