84

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4 Smell and Taste

Figure 4.1: The human sense of taste and its molecular actors (adapted from [2]).

4.2 Chemical Sensors Using Biological Cells, Molecules, and

Methods

Liu et al. present an excellent overview of the approaches that have been used to build

artificial gas sensors out of biological taste and smell cells and molecules—even includ-

ing sensors with live insects [11] (Figure 4.3).

We will not discuss live insects here, but one interesting approach used insect an-

tennae as the sensor [12]. Different antennae from different insects were used, so that

each antennae would create a different signal for one compound, as well as different