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Why do Fritos smell so strongly of yeast that those chips are the best descriptor for yeast smell found on dog paws. Are Fritos seriously the most concentrated yeast we interact with casually?

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A University of Wyoming researcher and his team have discovered that separating male and female mice, over time, changes the way they smell.

The study investigates how the olfactory sensory receptors in mice change as a function of exposure to odors emitted from members of the opposite sex, says Stephen Santoro, an assistant professor in the Department of Zoology and Physiology.

"The idea is that our experiences change our sensory system in a way that is semipermanent. This is probably true in humans as much as mice," Santoro says. "We found that mice that are housed with the opposite sex all of the time have olfactory sensory receptors that are similar in composition because they are smelling similar smells. On the other hand, mice that were housed separately by sex have sex-specific differences in their olfactory receptors. As a result, they may perceive odors differently."

The new study, titled "Sex Separation Induces Differences in the Olfactory Sensory Receptor Repertoires of Male and Female Mice," was published Dec. 4 in Nature Communications, an open access journal that publishes high-quality research from all areas of the natural sciences. Papers published by the journal represent important advances of significance to specialists within each field.

Carl van der Linden, a graduate student from Santa Ynez, Calif., in the UW Neuroscience Program, was the paper's lead author. Pooja Gupta, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Zoology and Physiology and who works in Santoro's lab, was a contributing author. Susanne Jakob, a preceptor in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University; and Catherine Dulac, the Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and department chair at Harvard University, and a scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, were contributing authors.

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Researchers have uncovered new details in how the olfactory epithelium develops. The new knowledge could help scientists prove that turbinates and the resulting larger surface area of the olfactory epithelium are one definitive reason dogs smell so well.

Dogs, known for their extraordinarily keen senses of smell, can be trained to use their sensitive sniffers to find drugs, bombs, bed bugs, missing hikers and even cancer. Among dogs and other animals that rely on smell, at least one factor that may give them an advantage is a sheet of tissue in the nasal cavity.

In humans, this tissue -- called the olfactory epithelium -- is a single flat sheet lining the roof of the nasal cavity. In dogs, however, the olfactory epithelium forms a complex maze, folding and curling over a number of bony protrusions, called turbinates, that form in the nasal cavity. The olfactory epithelium contains specialized neurons that bind to odor molecules and send signals to the brain that are interpreted as smell. Dogs have hundreds of millions more of these neurons than people do. It is assumed this added structural complexity is responsible for dogs' superior ability to smell. But, surprisingly, that has never been shown scientifically.

Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have uncovered new details in how the olfactory epithelium develops. The new knowledge could help scientists prove that turbinates and the resulting larger surface area of the olfactory epithelium are one definitive reason dogs smell so well.