“Zebrafish… also find these scents disgusting”

Danielle Venton writes in the PNAS First Look Blog:

Geneticists and cell biologists from the University of Cologne in Germany and Harvard University have found that zebrafish, a vertebrate model animal, also find these scents disgusting.

The phrase “these scents” refers to the personal odors of the socially-isolating chemical cadaverine [the structure of which is pictured here] and its lonely-making buddy, putrescine.

The study is:

“High-affinity olfactory receptor for the death-associated odor cadaverine,” Ashiq Hussain, Luis R. Saraiva, David M. Ferrero, Gaurav Ahuja, Venkatesh S. Krishna, Stephen D. Liberles, and Sigrun I. Korsching, PNAS, epub November 11, 2013.

BONUS VIDEO [quasi-related]: The Wellcome Trust’s “Science and beauty and the zebrafish”: