Both the olfactory system and the gustatory system in vertebrates work by processing chemoreceptive signals. However, there are several differences between them. Describe/explain three differences
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: 1. Olfactory receptor proteins are always coupled to G-proteins, while gustatory receptor proteins have a variety of signal transduction mechanisms.
2. Olfactory neurons express only a single olfactory protein per cell, unlike gustatory receptor cells, which express more than one kind of receptor protein.
3. Olfactory receptor cells are bipolar sensory neurons, while gustatory receptor cells are epithelial cells that release neurotransmitter onto a primary afferent neuron.
Because a single taste neuron can synapse with more than one taste receptor cell, this suggests that coding of taste information is complex. It is unlikely that the coding of taste information works in a fashion by which a single taste is coded by a single neuron. This is different than processing in the olfactory system, where each neuron expresses only a single receptor protein, and therefore it is more likely that each neuron codes for a single olfactory sensation. The coding for tastants is probably very different than the coding for odorants.
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