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Updated: May 13, 2026

Volatile Sex Pheromone Extraction and Chemoattraction Assay in Caenorhabditis elegans
Published on: August 9, 2024
Neural mechanisms of alarm pheromone signaling
Anders Enjin1, Greg Seong-Bae Suh
1Molecular Neurobiology Program, Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, Department of Cell Biology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York 10016, USA. Anders.Enjin@med.nyu.edu
Abstract:
Alarm pheromones are important semiochemicals used by many animal species to alert conspecifics or other related species of impending danger. In this review, we describe recent developments in our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying the ability of fruit flies, zebrafish and mice to mediate the detection of alarm pheromones. Specifically, alarm pheromones are detected in these species through specialized olfactory subsystems that are unique to the chemosensitive receptors, second messenger-signaling and physiology. Thus, the alarm pheromones appears to be detected by signaling mechanisms that are distinct from those seen in the canonical olfactory system.
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