Chapter 1 Introduction to science of smell

                Chapter 1.1 The main argument of science of smell

     Science of smell is the science of olfaction, belonging to the categoriality of the life sciences, which is specially studying on how to the biological world use their olfaction to survive. It is a kind of boundary science, which is closely related to the biology, medical science, and chemistry. Science of smell is a blank subject. There is no term in the dictionary, no such subject in the world, and also there is no monograph on it.

     Both human beings and the vertebrates have five kinds of sense organs, which are eyes, ears, mouth, nose and body (skin).They have the senses of vision, audition, taste sense, olfactory sense and tactile sense respectively. The sense of vision built up optics, the sense of audition built up acoustics and the tactile sense built up many physics quantities, but only the sense of olfaction and taste did not build up any subjects. The reason is because that the gustatory and olfaction are kinds of chemical reactions, it is started relatively late on the chemistry research, and the research for the generation mechanism of the taste sense and olfaction is still staying on the stage of developing and the research for them exits lots of difficulties. Up to now, there is no special institute studying on this systematically. The research for the smell is each takes what he needs; it can be divided into several fields, such as foods, cosmetics, reconnaissance, environmental protection and the pest control, etc.

     The olfaction should be ranked first in the five kinds of sense organs. To animals, the two most important things in life are to seek for foods and to reproduce. Most animals use their olfaction to seek for foods and identify poisonous substances since their noses are on the above of the mouths and the nares are facing to the mouth. Perceive courtship pheromone to look for a mate by olfactory, to identify parent-child relationship also by smell. The dependence of the animals, plants and the microbe to the olfaction will be discussed as a special subject in the other papers. This paper summarized the main points of science of smell .errors and blind zones of the life sciences can be summarized as 50, they are as follows:

【blind zone】1. The problem about food chain and anti- food chain

     Biota have the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom and microbial community, their relationship is a relationship between eating and being eaten, carnivorous animal is an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue. An herbivorous animal that feeds primarily on grass, an omnivore is a kind of animal that eats either other animals or plants.       Microorganisms are known to be divided into two kinds: Parasitic bacteria and saprophytes. The parasitic bacteria" Eat” Animal or plant in a disguised form, saprophytes eat plants or dead animals. Plants are always being eaten. Very few plants eat animals (such as nepenthes, etc.), more simply, the food chain through a series of various biological relationships between eating and being eaten, and the creature with the kind of biological closely linked. Law of the jungle is a matter of course. It seems that there is no struggle; actually it is not that simple. If you didn't eat (it), you couldn’t live; if you are being eaten, you will not survive. How can it have no struggle? This life-and-death survival race has never ceased for a minute. Chasing, fighting and avoiding are open, and these exist only between animals. The main form of struggle existing between biological world is infighting that of producing poison and detoxification, and it is known as chemical warfare. We may take plant for example: The chemical composition of the plant is the most complex which it can roughly divided into two categories that are primary metabolites and secondary metabolites, the primary metabolites is used to maintain life and breed offspring, the secondary metabolites is the weapon of the plant to defuse the poison and prevent damage from animals and microorganisms. And with it, the plant adapt to their environment.

     But the defense capability of plant is limited. Otherwise plants will rule all the land. Animal and microbes want to survive. Produce the ability of detoxification (digestion) is the premise to make a living. Similarly, the ability of detoxification (digestion) is also limited what the reason is that animals’ foods sources are limited, microbial hosts are also limited. Some animals also produce poison. They have both offensive and defensive capabilities. The digestion of all animals can be regarded as another form of detoxification and this question is related to the definition of "Poison" .That will be mentioned later.

     Parasitic bacteria is also divided into two categories, one does not destroy the host cell, it is harmless or beneficial to host, and the other destroys the host cell( referred to as corrosion )which is called harmful bacteria, for the plant it is known as disease, and to humans or animals what is referred to as pathogens. The envelope of the pathogenic bacteria which contains the exotoxins is corrosive substance. The organism has a variety of physiological changes that caused by the endotoxin of the envelope, the virus’s DNA is the most terrible, and it can be combined with the DNA of the organism to become the future generations of the virus, because it is protected by the cell membrane, the drug cannot (be) directly kill it. The bacteria (including viruses) that are harmful to animals and plants are a small part of the huge groups of microbes, and the species of plant and animal is limited.

     The chemical warfare of biological kingdoms that between produce poison and detoxification was talked above and it is known as chemical warfare, there is also chemical warfare between the same species.

     It is clear that animal using poison as a weapon, poisonous insects produce poison to prevent birds and animals from eating, poisonous snakes produce poison which is the offensive weapons, puffer fish produce poison in the spawning period is to protect future generations, it is a common experience that the beasts could exhale a toxic gas when they were fighting, this is obviously the anti-food chain, how can people don’t know this?

     Different plants and different microorganisms have turf battles, some plants have the instinct to exclude non-similar plants for survival, the place where mugwort, and plantain etc. grow densely, other plants will not grow, this is similar to the antagonizing effect of bacteria, when some bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes gain advantage in a site, the other fungi cannot survive, according to this principle, antibiotics were made, although these cannot be said to be anti-food chain, but here we can see the universality and the cruelty of the biological struggle.

     The frequency of using poison of lower organisms is higher than that of higher organisms; the detoxification capacity of omnivorous animal higher than the carnivorous animal and herbivores, ruminant animal is higher than that of non-ruminant animal, polyphagia shows that it have many kinds of digestive enzymes, digestive enzyme in a sense is detoxification material.

     Living things will not stay in an evolutionary level, the driving force of evolution is the struggle for survival, in addition to morphological changes, and the physiological function is improved with the increasing of biological chemical composition. The struggle between producing poison and detoxification is the impulsion of biological evolution, the relationship between eating and being eaten as if there has been no change, the organism which being eaten is change, will the organism which eating have no change? Darwin’s theory of evolution found out the trajectory of biological evolution from the biological fossil morphology, Li Demin’s theory of anti-food chain revealed the driving force of biological evolution. Can it be assumed that: The food chain is a metaphysical point of view that to look at the problem from the surface and anti-food chain is dialectical materialism?

     The food chain is about intergeneration relationship between the biological world, and the anti-food chain is about inter-restriction relationship between the biological world, that is every organism can keep from being eaten.

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