Haddad Rafi, Khan Rehan, Takahashi Yuji K, Mori Kensaku, Harel David, Sobel Noam
Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Hertzel, Rehovot 76100 Israel.
Nat Methods. 2008 May;5(5):425-9. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.1197. Epub 2008 Mar 30.
In studies of vision and audition, stimuli can be systematically varied by wavelength and frequency, respectively, but there is no equivalent metric for olfaction. Restricted odorant-feature metrics such as number of carbons and functional group do not account for response patterns to odorants varying along other structural dimensions. We generated a multidimensional odor metric, in which each odorant molecule was represented as a vector of 1,664 molecular descriptor values. Revisiting many studies, we found that this metric and a second optimized metric were always better at accounting for neural responses than the specific metric used in each study. These metrics were applicable across studies that differed in the animals studied, the type of olfactory neurons tested, the odorants applied and the recording methods used. We use this new metric to recommend sets of odorants that span the physicochemical space for use in olfaction experiments.
在视觉和听觉研究中，刺激可以分别通过波长和频率进行系统变化，但嗅觉却没有等效的度量标准。诸如碳原子数和官能团等受限的气味特征度量标准并不能解释对沿其他结构维度变化的气味剂的反应模式。我们生成了一种多维气味度量标准，其中每个气味剂分子都表示为一个由1664个分子描述符值组成的向量。回顾许多研究，我们发现这个度量标准和第二个优化后的度量标准在解释神经反应方面总是比每项研究中使用的特定度量标准更好。这些度量标准适用于在研究的动物、测试的嗅觉神经元类型、应用的气味剂和使用的记录方法等方面存在差异的各项研究。我们使用这个新的度量标准来推荐跨越物理化学空间的气味剂集合，以供嗅觉实验使用。
