The ability to detect and process salient sensory information from diverse environments is crucial to an organism’s survival. Animals exhibit a broad variety of cellular and molecular adaptations that enable them to detect, filter and process relevant chemical information from their specific ecological niche. While molecular, cellular and behavioral aspects of chemosensation have been studied in detail in a variety of terrestrial animals, these aspects are less well studied in aquatic context, where chemosensation is subjected to different physiochemical constraints.
I recently described the molecular basis of the “taste by touch” sense in octopus that guides complex and autonomous arm behaviors, including the characterization of a cephalopod specific family of chemotactile receptors (CRs). CRs are co-expressed in diverse patterns and form heteromeric ion channel complexes to specify signal detection and transduction. Thus, CRs offer a uniquely-suited protein family to understand how single protein complexes facilitate the detection and filtering of cellular signals to elicit sophisticated behaviors. Furthermore, we can transfer knowledge from this system to sensory systems of other marine invertebrates and study how chemosensory systems evolved to suit an animal’s particular environmental niche.