Insects use the sense of smell to identify their host animals and plants. The ability to detect and discriminate thousands of odorants from their hosts uses a very large family of transmembrane odorant receptors and complex neuronal circuitry. The study of olfaction has benefited from computational approaches to identify important principles: protein sequences of receptors involved in odor detection, structural features of odors involved in binding to receptors, gene-regulatory mechanisms for expression of receptors, and analysis of insect behavior. I will present our work in each of these areas that have used computational biology.

Prof. Anandasankar Ray