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Science of scent recognized

Oct. 4, 2004

Scientists Axel, Buck share $1.3 million award for olfactory findings

Academy members tell The Associated Press that the decision to give the pair the award was not in light of any medical or commercial payoffs, but rather to honor their exploration of one of the humanity’s most profound senses.

Axel and Buck clarified the intricate biological pathway from the nose to the brain that lets people sense smells. A whiff of an odor brings a mix of different molecules into the nose, where each molecule activates several odor receptors. This pattern of activation is interpreted by the brain, letting people recognize and form memories of about 10,000 different odors, the Nobel Assembly said.

Axel and Buck studied mice, which have about 1,000 odor receptor types. People have somewhat fewer. The two scientists showed that about 3 percent of human genes are devoted to producing the odor receptors.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6167875/
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. iLink:- Nobel_Prize 041004
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104 Press Release: The 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

4 October 2004

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2004

jointly to

Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck
for their discoveries of
"odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system"

http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/2004/press.html
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gif Odorant Receptors and the Organization of the Olfactory System

http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/2004/odorant_eng.gif
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. A Nobel for Explaining How the Nose Knows

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=716&e=27&u=/latimests/20041005/ts_latimes/anobelforexplaininghowthenoseknows
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