Animals are equipped with specialized sensory organs fundamental to their interactions with a rich multisensory world through the perception of chemical (smell and taste) and physical (mechanical, sound, vision and temperature) stimuli.

These systems diversified over more than a half billion years to produce an array of sense organs with multiple functions. By contrast, disruption of sensory genes can have serious repercussions (e.g. winter depression due to disturbance in circadian clock regulation, varied sensitivity to sweetness and obesity, and photoreceptor degeneration associated with visual disorders). In this project, an omics approach will be use to assess the molecular mechanisms underlying animal sensory including associated genetic malfunctions. This may lead to a wide range of applications with relevance for environmental and biomedical research.