- Trainer/in: Fabrice Robvieux
Objectives: To provide a comprehensive perspective of taste and smell chemistry and perception.
Contents:
Molecular aspects:
- Tastant and odorous molecules
- - Ligand-receptor interactions as a result of several factors (H-bonds; electrostatic, dipolar, π-π, steric and
hydrophobic interactions; entropic effects such as desolvation and degrees of freedom) - Importance of stereochemistry and conformational analysis: odorants, proteins and nucleic acids
- Synthetic approach to representative odorants
- Essential oils, concrete and absolutes: Extraction and analysis, lipid, terpene and shikimate metabolites
- Thermal origin of food flavours: Oxidation of lipids, thiamine degradation and Maillard reaction
- Coffee, wine, chocolate
Physiology, molecular biology and cognition:
- The chemical senses: Chemoreception in the nose (odor and aroma, trigeminal, pheromones) and in the oral cavity (taste and trigeminal)
- Sensory organs and tissues; receptors and transduction; genes, coding, neuronal projections
- Psychophysical measurements of tastes and odors, Stevens and Weber's laws
- Anosmia, ageusia, adaptation
Structure-activity relationships:
- Conventional classifications, descriptive dictionaries
- Molecular modelling, modern approaches to structure-activity relationships
- Study of representative cases: Sandalwood, amber-woody and androstenone-like models
- Capsaicin, allicin and menthol: Fooling thermal nociception