Computational approaches are widely used to get insights into the chemistry and biology ofchemosensation. The ECRO Special Interest Group Computational Chemosensation aims to gatherresearchers working in computational chemosensation, to facilitate their interaction and advancecomputational techniques for chemical senses, but also promote the potential of computational worksto promote collaborations with experimentalists. The proposed symposium is the first initiative of thegroup and aims to highlight computationally guided advancements in chemosensation, ranging frommachine learning based predictors, to the use of computer-aided drug design tools for ligand discovery,to the multiscale simulations of chemosensory receptors, to network analyses of proteins and signalingevents. Works on both taste and smell will be presented in the symposium. We expect that bringingtogether computational researchers from different fields will provide stimulating and fruitfuldiscussions about future perspectives. Moreover, during the symposium, the ECRO special interestgroup will be introduced to the audience.
Chemosensation is essential for navigating the environment, finding food sources, forming groups, or detecting mating partners. To execute the most efficient and appropriate behavior, however, animals need to process chemosensory inputs in a context dependent way. How chemosensory processing gets modulated by external and internal information (e.g. concurrent sensory stimuli or internal states) to result in an adapted behavioral response, will be the topic of this symposium. This symposium is comprised of a selection of speakers working with a diverse set of model organisms, which all show flexible behaviors towards chemosensory cues.
Across species, chemosensation is the result of complex interactions between the environment,the sensory organs, and the neural system. As a result even minimal changes in the external orinternal milieu can perturb chemosensory experience. Here we showcase a group of young,promising scientists who are uncovering the effect of different perturbations on thechemosensation of their respective model systems.
Tobias Ackels, Sebastian H Bitzenhofer, Katherine Nagel
Olfactory cues are highly dynamic, as is their processing in the brain. With this symposium, we willhighlight recent work on the dynamics of natural odour stimuli, olfactory representations, andolfactory behaviour, in a variety of model systems (mouse, fish, and fly). This symposium will give anexciting and timely overview merging complementary perspectives on the dynamic aspects ofolfactory processing and perception across model systems.