 The 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Richard Axel (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New York, NY) and Linda Buck (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA) for a series of studies that led to their groundbreaking discovery of the gene family responsible for odorant receptors and clarified how the olfactory system works.
 Prior to Buck and Axel’s breakthrough work, the sense of smell remained the most mysterious of our senses and very little, if anything was understood about the basic principles for recognizing and remembering all the odors that cross our paths each day. But this changed in 1991 when Richard Axel and Linda Buck discovered a family of approximately 1000 genes that encode the olfactory receptors. These receptors reside in the olfactory epithelium, which is a small patch of cells on the wall of the nasal cavity.
The olfactory receptors are located on olfactory receptor cells and are responsible for the detection of inhaled odorants. Axel and Buck found that each olfactory receptor cell is highly specialized for a small number of odors – each cell possesses only one type of odorant receptor and each receptor can detect only a small number of odors. The olfactory cells send nerve projections to distinct areas of the olfactory bulb, the primary olfactory area of the brain. Receptor cells carrying the same type of receptor send their nerve projections to the same spot on the olfactory bulb. From these spots on the olfactory bulb the information is relayed to other parts of the brain, where the information from several olfactory receptors are combined to form a pattern. These patterns are processed into associations that make up our databank of odor perceptions.
In 1992, the Sense of Smell Institute also awarded its prestigious Sense of Smell Award to Richard Axel and Linda Buck for this trailblazing body of research.
Drs. Axel and Buck have worked together and independently during their extensive careers to expand our knowledge about one of our most important senses. To learn more about Buck & Axel’s work and for a description of how smells are processed by the brain visit the Nobel Prize website at www.nobelprize.org. You can also listen to their acceptance remarks upon winning the award at this site.
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