Chapter 8-Making Scents are making sense! :)

NOT REALLY!!! I still find Shubin extremely random/confusing especially in the intro to this chapter. The DNA in a blender, although true, seems to be useless information with absolutely nothing to do with the scent. DNA does control the bodily functions, including smell, but putting meat in a blender with salt water, dish soap, and meat tenderizer to separate the DNA from the meat seems unnecessary to include.

In this chapter, ancient fish have been understood to have a combination of air and water genes in their olfactory receptors. I can't believe olfactory receptors are just a fancy way to say the mechanism that gives you the sense of smell. Does that mean that humans and modern organisms are less complex than previous fish or just more specific? If evolution really exists, then most organisms may lose their sense of smell just like the dolphin or the whale.

Smell gets even better! It was found that only 3% of the genome is for olfaction but not all of that even works due to mutations and other mishaps. If there is relationship between taste and smell, in which there are not two separate senses, then does that mean only that 3% is designated for taste too? or does it prove that there are two separate senses? It's funny to think that all of these questions are over only 3% of the genome!