Research group maps receptors in mouse vomeronasal organ
(PhysOrg.com) -- Science is more often than not a field where very small steps in progress are the norm. Researchers can toil away for years on projects that to some might seem trivial; but its these small steps by many that lead to big breakthroughs by the few. Nowhere is this more apparent than in neuroscience. Trying to understand how the myriad of nerve cells that exist in living creatures do what they do is like trying to understand the intricacies of love, or the actions of individual molecules in a vast ocean. One example of this is Catherine Dulac, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Fifteen years ago, she and a group of colleagues discovered the first receptor genes; now she and a new group have developed a way to show which individual sensors in the vomeronasal organ respond...