Predicting sensory data from GCO data
Single Paper Presentation

Terry Acree
Food Science & Technology

Katherine Kittel
Food Science & Technology

     Abstract ID Number: 132
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: May 20, 2003

Abstract
Flavor chemists have struggeled for many years with their inability to provide sensory scientists with useful data to predict, understand and modify perception. A list of all the chemicals that have been demonstrated to be above or near their odor threshold in food systems was put on the world-wide-web in 1997 [Arn & Acree]. It consisted of less that 600 chemicals but it included many that have been identified in the chemical ecology of other organisms. It is as though there is a limited palette of odorants that humans and many other animals have evolved to detect in their ecologies. In contrast, large differences in individual olfactory detectors have been observed at both the genetic level [Zozula, et al., 2001] and the functional level [Friedrichet al., 2000]. This presentation will attempt to out the problems in retionalizing these two seemingly conflicting observation in terms of the structure and organization of the chemosensory system and the diversity of natural products.