Fatty Acid Smell, Anesthesia, and Use on Fruit Crops

Odors convey important information to select a sex partner, to find a food source, or to detect a danger. Among those some volatile molecules have been shown to cause a reversible anesthesia. However, their mode of action appears still largely mysterious. Here we describe a novel property of Olfactory Receptor 47b (OR47b), on olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) expressing male-specific transcription factor FruM. We found some interesting properties of a fatty acid that can be present on food sources and oviposition sites for Drosophilid species. We show that OR47b neurons projecting to VA1v glomerulus are sensitive to this odor, and that this influences Drosophila behavior causing a strong ave…