In the course of evolution, nature has endowed humans with systems for the recognition of a wide range of tastes with a sensitivity and selectivity which are indispensable for the evaluation of edibility and flavour attributes. Inspiration by a biological sense of taste has become a basis for the design of instruments, operation principles and parameters enabling to mimic the unique properties of their biological precursors. In...

A characteristic feature of human and animal organs of smell is the ability to identify hundreds of thousands of odours. It is accompanied by particular smell sensations, which are a basic source of information about odour mixture. The main structural elements of biological smell systems are the olfactory receptors. Small differences in a structure of odorous molecules (odorants) can lead to significant change of odour, which is...

Among all the senses, olfactory system of mammals is the least characterised as far as the mechanisms of odour identification are concerned. The results of recent investigations allow better understanding of the operation mechanism of the sense of smell. Progress in this field is crucial for the development of sensor technology based on olfaction-inspired biomaterials, which simulate the olfactory system of the biological counterparts....