The sense of taste is among the first to come into contact with food before we ingest it, but whether animals can taste basic or alkaline food and how they do it remained unclear until now....
Sugar substitutes can be found in ingredient lists on food packages, often with names that many consumers don’t recognize, like adventame, neotame and acesulfame potassium. Foods that claim “no artificial sweeteners” often are sweetened with stevia and other so-called “natural” sugar substitutes. A variety of these...
A research team from Monell Chemical Senses Center recently showed that the smell test SCENTinel 1.1 can successfully discriminate between different types of smell disorders. The recent paper, published in Chemical Senses, also provides evidence that SCENTinel 1.1 is the only direct olfactory test to...
Taking place from the 18th to 22nd of February, this year's Biophysical Society Meeting brings together "leading scientists ...
This week at Monell Chemical Sense Center, we join 6 other Philadelphia-based research institutions at the Philadelphia Postdoc Preview. The event brings together the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Drexel University College of Medicine, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Monell Chemical Senses Center, Thomas Jefferson University, University...
Mehmet Hakan Ozdener, MD, PhD, leads the recent development of a new method to reprogram human taste cells into neuron-like cells. Amber Alhadeff, PhD, joins an outstanding cohort of early-career scientists honored by the New York Stem Cell Foundation. Gary Beauchamp, PhD, along with two other Philadelphia...
Contact: Karen Kreeger, kkreeger@monell.org (PHILADELPHIA) December 21, 2022. The Monell Chemical Senses Center has received $1,000,000 in Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program funds for the immediate creation of quality jobs for Pennsylvanians. The program – Monell’s first such grant – finances projects that result in employment...
There are bananas, and then there are banana-flavored things. Laffy Taffy is my personal favorite, but Runts, Hi-Chews, and jelly beans also capture perhaps not this fruit’s essence but an idea of it. Where did this banana-like flavor come from? The popular narrative is a tale...
The human brain registers at least four classes of compounds as the scent we call musk. Structurally, these compounds look nothing alike, yet they smell the same: gamy, rich, and leathery. Researchers at Duke University and Kao Corporation, a chemical and consumer products company in Tokyo,...
Nancy Bonini studies Parkinson’s and other human brain diseases by probing the genes of a lab animal smaller than the head of a pin: the fruit fly. Gary Beauchamp made fundamental discoveries about the human senses of taste and smell, showing how we can be weaned...