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Pharmacological Antagonism And The Olfactory Code, Mihwa Na
Pharmacological Antagonism And The Olfactory Code, Mihwa Na
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Mammals can detect and discriminate uncountable odors through their odorant receptors. To accommodate the countless and diverse odors, exceptionally large numbers of odorant receptor (OR) genes are expressed in mammals. In addition, the mammals utilize a combinatorial code, where an odorant molecule can activate multiple ORs; an OR also responds to a set of multiple odorants. In nature, an odor is often a complex mixture of multiple odorant molecules. The combination of the ORs activated by each constituent generates the unique olfactory code for the particular odor.
Some odorants can antagonize select ORs, as discussed in Chapter 1. An antagonist …