Many organisms and cellular processes use chemical signals as their main channel of information about the environment. All environments are noisy and require some form of filtering to detect important signals. Chemical signals are transported by turbulent currents, viscous flow, and molecular diffusion.
Receptor cells extract chemical signals from the environment through various filtering processes.
Currently, we use the lobster and its exquisite senses of smell and taste as our major model to study the signal-filtering capabilities of the whole animal and its narrowly tuned chemoreceptor cells. Research in our laboratory focuses on amino acids, which represent important food signals for the lobster, and on the function and chemistry of pheromones used in lobster courtship. We examine animal behavior in the sea and in the lab. This includes social interactions and chemotaxis. To understand the role of chemical signals in the sea we use real lobsters and small untethered robots.