Principles of Structural, Chemical, and Functional Organization of Sensory Receptors
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
The variety of structural, chemical, and functional features inherent in receptor cells of sense organs reflects their strict specialization. Each sense organ responds selectively to an appropriate kind of chemical or physical energy from the environment: light, odorous or gustatory substances, acoustic vibration, or currents of liquid. The response, usually termed reception, is initiated and accompanied by dynamic molecular transformations in specific and nonspecific biologically active chemical compounds located in particular structures—organoids of the sensory cells. At first sight, the occurrence of these specialized structures and of the chemical substances they contain would appear to preclude any comparison, as the rods and cones of photoreceptors with the peripheral processes of olfactory cells, and particularly with those of auditory receptors. However, modern biochemical, cytochemical, and electron microscopic methods provide convincing evidence showing that despite the occurrence of a number of distinctive features, the origin of structural and functional evolution of all...
