Paul Breslin is a geneticist and biologist. He is most notable for his work in taste perception and oral irritation, in humans as well as in Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly. He is a member of the faculty at the Monell Chemical Senses Center and acts as director of the Science Apprenticeship Program.
He is interested in human oral perception and its genetic basis. The primary focus of his work is on taste perception with an emphasis on taste discrimination, taste enhancement and suppression, and taste localization. He also studies oral irritation/chemesthesis, mouthfeel, and astringency. The interactions among gustation, chemesthesis, and olfaction that comprise flavor are the topic of an ongoing research program that includes fMRI as a tool to understand regional brain involvement. In addition to human research, he conduct parallel genetic studies of the chemical senses in his Fly Lab, which uses Drosophila melanogaster as a model.
