Getting In Touch With The Senses: Smell
Receptors for smell are located not only on the mucus-covered olfactory epithelium in the back of the nose but in the heart, lungs, bloodstream and other cells of the body, researchers reported Sunday at the 245th annual meeting of the American Chemical Society.Peter Schieberle, director for food chemistry at the Technical University of Munich, said the discovery dispels the notion such receptors exist only in the nose, where the cells connect with airborne chemical compounds triggering a biochemical reaction that causes the brain to perceive odor.
"Our team recently discovered that blood cells - not only cells in the nose - have odorant receptors," said Schieberle. "In the nose, these so-called receptors sense substances called odorants and translate them into an aroma that we interpret as pleasing or not pleasing in the brain. But surprisingly, there is growing evidence that also the heart, the lungs and many other non-olfactory organs have these receptors.
