Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004   The olfactory system The olfactory epithelium contains millions of olfactory neurons, which send messages directly to the olfactory bulb of the brain. The olfactory receptor cells are the only neurons in the nervous system exposed directly to the external environment. Contents: | | | |  | …

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004   Combinatorial receptor codes The odorant receptor family is used in a combinatorial manner to detect odorants and encode their unique identities. Different odorants are detected by different combinations of receptors and thus have different receptor codes. These codes are translated by the brain into diverse odour…

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004   A large gene family Axel and Buck searched for genes coding for proteins expressed exclusively in the olfactory epithelium. Using molecular biology techniques they discovered a large set of genes coding for olfactory receptors. This large gene family is composed of several hundred different genes encoding…

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004   The organization of odorant receptor inputs in the olfactory cortex Signals derived from two different odorant receptors, M5 and M50, are targeted to different, but partially overlapping clusters of cortical neurons. These clusters have similar locations in the brains of different mice.     Receptor activation…

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004   The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Richard Axel and Linda Buck for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system. In a series of pioneering studies the laureates have clarified in…

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004   Species differences The area of the olfactory epithelium (red) in dogs is some forty times larger than in humans. Mice – the species Axel and Buck studied – have about one thousand different odorant receptor types. Humans have a smaller number than mice; some of the…

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004   A large family of odorant receptors Richard Axel and Linda Buck published their fundamental paper in 1991, in which they described the genes coding for a large family of odorant receptors. The odorant receptors are located on the olfactory receptor cells in the nasal cavity. Each…

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New York City is my world. I was born in Brooklyn, the first child of immigrant parents whose education was disrupted by the Nazi invasion of Poland. Although not themselves learned, my parents shared a deep respect for learning. I grew up in a home rich in warmth, but empty of books, art or music.…

I was born in 1947 in Seattle, Washington, a city surrounded by mountains, forests, and the sea. My mother was the daughter of Swedish immigrants who had come to the US in the late nineteenth century while my father’s family had Irish roots on one side and ancestors extending back to the American Revolution on…