Pseudogenes are not capable of producing a fully functional protein. It's certainly enough to excite senior author Dr. Peter Mombaerts, the head of the Laboratory of Developmental Biology and Neurogenetics at Rockefeller University in New York. His team found the gene after searching for human genes that resembled the rat equivalent of the V1R receptor gene sequences. They then screened several types of human tissues and found that V1RL1 was always evident in olfactory tissue. Their findings appear in the September issue of Nature Genetics .
Pheromones are odorous substances secreted by various insects and animals.
But in humans, there has been little data showing that humans respond to pheromones. The most well known evidence describes how groups of human females living in groups, such as women living in college dormitories, tend to develop synchronized menstrual cycles. In some animals, it's relatively large, but in humans, the millimeters-long groove is inactive. Some people don't even have one. That, says neuroscientist Charles Wysocki, may suggest that humans detect pheromones through the olfactory cells lining our nose, where the researchers have found the active V1RL1 gene.