earticle

영어

Human can discriminate numerous odors with combinatorial olfactory receptor codes among odorant molecules. In the case of some odorant molecules, even same odorant smells differently depending on its concentration. In this study, we have verified that this concentrationdependent perception is caused by the change in the combination of activated receptors. The receptor activation was monitored by measuring the calcium signal in HEK-293 cells expressing various human olfactory receptors. Indole and amyl butyrate were used as model odorant molecules. The indole is the odorant which smells differently depending on the
concentration, while the amyl butyrate is the odorant which smells similarly even with the different concentration. The combination of the activated receptors was changed with the concentration of indole, while it was barely changed with the concentration of amyl butyrate. From this experiment, we could verify the cause of concentration-dependent changes
of odor perception.