{"id":2614,"date":"2007-07-03T16:02:09","date_gmt":"2007-07-03T20:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/capitalregionliving\/2007\/07\/nothing-to-sniff-at.html"},"modified":"2018-06-27T10:38:56","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T14:38:56","slug":"nothing-to-sniff-at","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/capitalregionliving\/2007\/07\/nothing-to-sniff-at\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing to sniff at"},"content":{"rendered":"
By William M. Dowd<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Buck should know what she’s speculating about. She won the 2004 Nobel Prize<\/a> in Physiology or Medicine for her discoveries on odor receptors and the organization of the olfactory system<\/a>.<\/p>\n Then again, perfume makers throughout human history have known the way to a man’s heart is through his nose.<\/p>\n (Posted 07\/03\/07)<\/p>\n