Nose for Design: Irreducible Complexity, Goal-Directed Hierarchical Organization, Combinatorial Coding

One of the dramatic moments in Living Waters: Intelligent Design in the Oceans of the Earth begins with a trip into the nostril of a salmon. Illustra's animators take us on a journey through that tiny opening to view a beautiful structure, the olfactory rosette (pictured above), where millions of specialized cells called olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) sport cilia, like antennae, equipped with olfactory receptors (ORs). Each OR responds to a specific odor molecule according to its shape and...