Nobelprijs Fysiologie of Geneeskunde 2004 voor de ontdekking van geurreceptoren en de organisatie van het reuksysteem

- The 2004 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Richard Axel and Linda B.Buck, for their discovery of smell receptors and the organisation of the olfactory system. Their original discovery concerned the identification of some 1000 genes that code for smell receptors in the olfactory epithelium of the rat. They also demonstrated that each receptor can only be activated by a limited number of odourants and that there is some overlap in specificity with other smell receptors. Odourants in inhaled air are specifically recognized and bound by the smell receptors on the olfactory neurones in the nasal epithelium. The activated neurones send an electrical signal to the mitral cells, the dendrites of which lie in the glomeruli of the olfactory bulb. In each olfactory neuron only one smell receptor gene is expressed. Neurones with the same type of receptor are spread throughout the epithelium but converge in the same glomerulus. An olfactory map is formed by means of mitral-cell projections which run to the cerebral cortex as well as to other parts of the brain. Possibly the information gained about odourants will be applied in the areas of physiology and pathophysiology; in the field of pharmacology for example where odourants may be used in the treatment of disorders of fertility, behaviour or mood.