How often have you looked at a seemingly mismatched couple walking hand-in-hand and wondered what was it that attracted them to each other?
That attraction may be so strong one of the parties could be accused of being led around by the nose. If Nobel Prize winner Linda Buck and a colleague at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle are on target, that is literally correct.
What Drs. Buck and Linda Buhumans have discovered is a new class of receptors used by mice to detect pheromones, the sex hormones released by a potential mate. The same gene is found in humans, so they theorize it may work the same way. In other words, their partner’s smell attracts them.
Of course, not just any smell will do. Mammals have about 1,000 different odor receptors which help trigger all sorts of responses to all sorts of smells — fear, repulsion, love, hunger and so on.
Buck should know what she’s speculating about. She won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discoveries on odor receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.
Then again, perfume makers throughout human history have known the way to a man’s heart is through his nose.
(Posted 07/03/07)
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