Araneda R C, Kini A D, Firestein S
Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA.
Nat Neurosci. 2000 Dec;3(12):1248-55. doi: 10.1038/81774.
An odor perception is the brain's interpretation of the activation pattern of many peripheral sensory neurons that are differentially sensitive to a wide variety of odors. The sensitivity of these neurons is determined by which of the thousand or so odor receptor proteins they express on their surface. Understanding the odor code thus requires mapping the receptive range of odorant receptors. We have adopted a pharmacological approach that uses a large and diverse pool of odorous compounds to characterize the molecular receptive field of an odor receptor. We found a high specificity for certain molecular features, but high tolerance for others-a strategy that enables the olfactory apparatus to be both highly discriminating, and able to recognize several thousand odorous compounds.
气味感知是大脑对许多外周感觉神经元激活模式的解读，这些神经元对多种气味具有不同的敏感性。这些神经元的敏感性取决于它们在表面表达的约一千种气味受体蛋白中的哪一种。因此，理解气味编码需要绘制气味受体的感受范围。我们采用了一种药理学方法，使用大量不同的有气味化合物来表征气味受体的分子感受野。我们发现对某些分子特征具有高度特异性，但对其他特征具有高度耐受性——这种策略使嗅觉器官既能高度辨别，又能识别数千种有气味的化合物。
