MAMMALS use pheromones as chemical messengers, for example to attract a mate. But exactly how the signal is transmitted to the animals鈥� nervous system has remained a mystery 鈥� until now.
Pheromones are thought to be detected by a structure in the nose called the vomeronasal organ. Genes belonging to a family called V1r are known to control sexual and other social behaviours in mice. So Ivan Rodriguez and his colleagues from the University of Geneva in Switzerland used a green fluorescent dye to tag neurons from the vomeronasal organ that express a V1r gene.
When they exposed the neurons to a range of different pheromones, they found that the tagged cells responded to just one of them, a pheromone found in mouse urine (Nature Neuroscience Online, DOI: 10.1038/nn978). It鈥檚 the first pheromone receptor to be discovered in mammals.
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