The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute announced this morning that the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Richard Axel, an HHMI investigator at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Linda Buck, an HHMI investigator at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The scientists were honored for their discoveries that clarify how the olfactory system works.

Axel and Buck discovered a large gene family, comprised of some 1,000 different genes (three per cent of human genes) that give rise to an equivalent number of olfactory receptor types. These receptors are located on the olfactory receptor cells, which occupy a small area in the upper part of the nasal epithelium and detect the inhaled odorant molecules.

In 1991 Axel and Buck--who was then a postdoctoral fellow in Axel's lab--discovered a family of genes that encode the odorant receptors of the olfactory epithelium, a patch of cells on the wall of the nasal cavity. The olfactory epithelium contains some 5 million olfactory neurons that send messages directly to the olfactory bulb of the brain. When an odor excites a neuron, the signal travels along the nerve cell's axon and is transferred to the neurons in the olfactory bulb. This structure, located in the very front of the brain, is the clearinghouse for the sense of smell. From the olfactory bulb, odor signals are relayed to both the brain's higher cortex, which handles conscious thought processes, and to the limbic system, which generates emotional feelings.

Each olfactory neuron in the epithelium is topped by at least 10 hair-like cilia that protrude into a thin bath of mucus at the cell surface. Somewhere on these cilia, scientists were convinced, there must be receptor proteins that recognize and bind odorant molecules, thereby stimulating the cell to
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Contact: Jim Keeley
keeleyj@hhmi.org
301-215-8858
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
4-Oct-2004

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