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The olfactory system plays an important role in recognizing environmental conditions. Since olfactory receptor genes were identified and cloned, various researches on olfactory systems have been carried out, and the interest in olfaction research has been increasing due to its potential industrial applications. In the smelling process, the binding of specific odorants to the olfactory receptor proteins is the initiation step in odor recognition and triggers signal transduction in a cell. Functional expression of the olfactory receptors on the surface of culturable cells would be very useful for application to an olfactory sensor. In this presentation I am going to discuss the method for an effective way to discriminate the odorants which bind to specific olfactory receptors. If the odorant molecules binding to each olfactory receptor are identified, this method can be applied to the olfactory biosensor. Several electronic noses have been developed; however, they have limitations in sensitivity and specificity. Array type devices coated with various cell lines expressing different olfactory receptors on each cell line would be a powerful
tool for detecting and discriminating various odorants.