Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists said Monday they have moved closer to creating “artificial noses,” after finding a way to mass-produce smell receptors in a laboratory.
Artificial noses could one day replace dogs that sniff out drugs and explosives, and could have numerous medical applications including identifying diseases that have distinct odours, according to Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT’s Centre for Biomedical Engineering and senior author of a study on the subject.
“Smell is perhaps one of the oldest and most primitive senses, but nobody really understands how it works,” said Zhang. “It still remains a tantalising enigma.”
In seeking to recreate smell, the MIT RealNose project seeks to recreate the most complex and least-understood of the five senses. Human smell systems are vast, including almost 400 functional genes, but dogs and mice far exceed human capacity, with around 1 000 functional olfactory receptor genes.
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