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The smell of danger
Date:6/28/2011

e able to detect?

In Liberles's lab at Harvard Medical School, graduate student David Ferrero began a search for other natural compounds that were detected by the TAARs. Working with commercially available predator and prey urine (used by gardeners to keep pests out of their crops and by hunters to mask their own scent or as lures for prey), Ferrero discovered that one of the 14 TAARs, TAAR4, detected the odor of several carnivores.

It seemed they had found a kairomone, a chemical that works like a pheromone, except that it communicates between members of different species instead of members of the same species. Prior to this discovery, the only known rodent-carnivore kairomones were a volatile compound produced by foxes, but not in that of other predators, and two non-volatile compounds produced by cats and rats (which prey on mice). Volatile compounds aerosolize and can be smelled at great distances; non-volatile compounds need to be sniffed more directly, something that would not be helpful in avoiding a predator directly but rather their terrain.

"One of the things that's really new here is that this is a generalized predator kairomone that's volatile," said Ferrero.

For rodents, it's the smell of danger.

Ferrero identified the compound that activates TAAR4 as 2-phenylethylamine, a product of protein metabolism. He then obtained specimens from 38 species of mammals and found elevated levels of 2-phenylethylamineby 18 of 19 species of carnivores, but not by non-carnivores (including rabbits, deer, primates, and a giraffe).

"It's been known so long that predator odors are great rodent deterrents, but we've discovered one molecule that's a key part of this ecological relationship," Ferrero said.

In a series of behavior tests, rats and mice showed a clear, innate avoidance to the smell of 2-phenylethylamine. The behavioral studies were repeated using a carnivore samples that had been depleted of 2-pheny
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Contact: David Cameron
david_cameron@hms.harvard.edu
617-432-0441
Harvard Medical School
Source:Eurekalert

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