Odorant receptors make scents

摘要

The goal of making sense of the sense of smell has come a step closer. Work on fruitflies reveals that odorant receptors act as bidirectional chemical detectors and determine the function of sensory neurons. Olfaction, once thought to be a primi-tivesense, is now recognized as an elaborate sensory system that deploys a large family of odorant receptors to analyse the chemical environment. Interactions between these receptors and their diver se ligands translate the world of odours into a neural code, but the mechanisms governing this complex process are not totally understood. More than a decade after the discovery of odorant-receptor genes in rodents, a study by Hallem, Ho and Carlson, reported in Cell, now provides a missing link between the molecular biology of odorant receptors and the physiological proper ties of sensory neurons.