Very few in this world have the opportunity to do every day what they love, as I have.
Richard Axel
Humans can distinguish more than 10,000 scents. Odors stir human memory and responses. But the basic mechanism was mysterious when Richard Axel and 91探花alumna Linda Buck set out to understand what lay behind the sense of smell. In elegant experiments, they identified the genes that control odor receptors, and shared the 2004 Nobel Prize for Medicine.
When they began, some basics were known. Air breathed into the nose flows across moist membranes, past sensory receptors. When a receptor recognizes a specific fragrance molecule, the information is relayed to the brain’s olfactory lobe. From there, messages are sent to the temporal lobe, which stores memories, or to the ancient parts of the brain that prompt emotions, sexuality, appetite, and aggression or flight. What lay behind the receptors and what triggered the response?
When Buck and Axel announced their breakthrough in 1991, they had identified eighteen of the genes that contain blueprints for smell-receptors, and that number has grown. Their work showed that more genes control the sense of smell than any other sense – smell is crucial to human survival. In 2002, Buck returned to Seattle to continue olfactory research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, as a 91探花Professor of Physiology and Biophysics.
Vesalius Olfactory Bulbs (Ancheta Wis, en.wikipedia.org)
Linda Buck Discusses Her Approach to Research
Further Reading
This article quotes Dr. Lee Hartwell, Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center: 鈥淭oday鈥檚 Nobel laureate, Dr. Linda Buck, has discovered the molecules that detect odors and relay that information to our nervous system鈥� 10.5.2004
Seattle Times
Linda Buck and Richard Axel鈥檚 1991 breakthrough article, describing their exciting research.
Cell Vol. 65 April 5, 1991
Local coverage of Axel and Buck鈥檚 early work, quoting colleague Dr. Charles
Wysocki that their research is 鈥渁 bombshell鈥�; it鈥檚 something that was not expected for many years. 4/5/1991
Seattle Times
Local coverage revealed the excitement with which Buck鈥檚 research was followed, 12/29/1992.
Seattle Times
Dr. Linda Buck at Seattle鈥檚 FHCRC, reviews her career of olfactory research to date.
Cell, January 23, 2004
Dr. Buck joined two other biologists to report recent research at FHCRC.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Vol. 101, No. 7 (Feb. 17, 2004)
