Discovery
In 2004 Linda B. Buck and Richard Axel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on olfactory receptors. In 2006 it was shown that another class of odorant receptors exist for volatile amines. This class of receptors consists of the trace amine-associated receptors (TAAR) with the exception of TAAR1 which is a receptor for thyronamines.
Unfortunately, as with many other GPCRs, there is still a lack of experimental structures at atomic level for olfactory receptors and structural information is based on homology modeling methods.
Read more about this topic: Olfactory Receptor
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)