Buck, Linda B. (1947-…), an American neuroscientist, won the 2004 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for her research on the sense of smell. She shared the Nobel Prize with another American neuroscientist, Richard Axel. The two scientists made discoveries about the genetic and cellular mechanisms responsible for the sense of smell in human beings and other organisms.
People detect smells by breathing in air that carries odors. Odors come from molecules that have been released into the air from many different substances. These molecules stimulate olfactory receptor cells inside the nose. The receptor cells send the impulses created by the odor along the olfactory nerves. The nerve impulses travel to the brain, which processes the impulses into information about the odor.
In 1991, Axel and Buck together discovered the family of genes that control the production of odor receptors in human beings and other animals. Each human body cell contains 23 pairs of chromosomes and an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 genes. Buck and others have identified about 350 active odor receptor genes in human beings. This number represents about 1 percent of all genes that make up a human being. Each one of these active genes produces a unique type of odor receptor. Scientists were surprised to learn that human beings have as many as 350 different types of odor receptors. In comparison, the human eye contains just four types of light receptors.
Through a series of laboratory experiments in the 1990’s, Buck and Axel, working independently, discovered that each olfactory receptor cell is sensitive to multiple types of odor molecules. Most odors are made up of many different molecules, which stimulate many individual receptors in the nose. The pattern of nerve impulses received from hundreds of different odor receptors is processed by the brain to create the sensation of different odors that people experience.
Linda Diane Brown was born on Jan. 29, 1947, in Seattle. She changed her last name to Buck after getting married. Buck studied psychology and microbiology at the University of Washington in Seattle, graduating in 1975. She received a Ph.D. degree in immunology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas in 1980. From 1980 through 1984, Buck worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University in New York City. In 1982, she began working with Richard Axel. She continued her research with Axel from 1984 through 1991, receiving funding as an associate with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). In 1991, Buck left New York City and took a faculty position in the department of neurobiology at Harvard University. She stayed at Harvard until 2002, when she joined the division of basic sciences at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Since 1994, Buck has held several positions as an investigator with the HHMI. She was appointed as a full investigator in 2001.
See also Axel, Richard ; Smell (How odors are detected) .
