Smells like death to me, how about you?

Journal article abstract excerpt: This smell is mainly carried by two small aliphatic diamines, putrescine and cadaverine, which are generated by bacterial decarboxylation of the basic amino acids ornithine and lysine. Depending on the species, these diamines may also serve as feeding attractants, oviposition attractants, or social cues.

My comment: In my model, nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled alternative splicings of pre-mRNA and amino acid substitutions lead to the chromosomal rearrangements associated with species-specific morphology and behavior. The amino acid substitutions stabilize the thermodynamics of intercellular signaling and organism-level thermoregulation.

Bacterial decarboxylation of any nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled amino acid substitutions that enable species-wide epistasis would be a likely indicator that smells like death to a conspecific and a likely indicator of a potential food source to a heterospecific. The transition from a species-specific chemical signal of fitness to a signal associated with impending death or bacterial decomposition would help different species establish and maintain their ecological niche.

See also Kohl (2013) “In the mouse model, the diet of the mice determines their nutrient-dependent pheromone production and social interactions with other mice. The mouse model also reveals something that was not revealed in the context of dogs and wolves (Axelsson et al., 2013; Lord, 2013). The aversive human body odor associated with fish odor syndrome can be epigenetically controlled by reducing dietary choline intake. It can also be controlled through antibiotic use (citations in Li et al., 2013). This may be important in the context of chemical ecology and epigenetic effects of genetically predisposed nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled human interactions (Martin et al., 2010; Preti & Leyden, 2010).”