Richard Axel and Linda Buck honored for discovering genetic
coding that allows us to identify and distinguish thousands of
smells NEW YORK, NY, October 4, 2004 – Richard Axel, M.D. of
Columbia University Medical Center has won the 2004 Nobel Prize
in Physiology or Medicine along with Linda B. Buck, Ph.D., of
the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center for clarifying how
the olfactory system works. Dr. Buck was a postdoctoral fellow
at Columbia when she and Dr. Axel jointly published the
fundamental paper on the subject in 1991. The sense of smell has
remained the most enigmatic of the senses. The work of Drs. Axel
and Buck has provided understanding on how the nose is able to
distinguish more than 10,000 distinct smells. The researchers
discovered a gene pool of more than 1,000 different genes that
encode olfactory receptors in the nose that detect odors and
olfaction. This is believed to be the largest gene family in the
human genome. "I'm deeply honored and very pleased," said Dr.
Axel. "This honor represent