Mimicking the human smell sensing mechanism with an artificial nose platform

Sang Hun Lee, Oh Seok Kwon, Hyun Seok Song, Seon Joo Park, Jong Hwan Sung, Jyongsik Jang, Tai Hyun Park

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

110 Scopus citations

Abstract

Sensing smell is a highly complex biological process, and characterizing and mimicking the interaction between the olfactory receptor (OR) protein and its ligands is extremely challenging. Herein, we report a highly sensitive and selective human nose-like nanobioelectronic nose (nbe-nose), which responds to gaseous odorants sensitively and selectively, has a signal specificity pattern similar to that in the cellular signal transduction pathway, and maintains an antagonistic behavior similar to the human nose. The human olfaction mechanism was mimicked by using carboxylated polypyrrole nanotubes (CPNTs) functionalized with human OR protein. The nbe-nose was able to detect gaseous odorants at a concentration as low as 0.02 parts-per-trillion (ppt), which was comparable to a highly trained, human expert's nose. The nbe-nose can be used scientifically for smell mechanism studies. It can be also applied to various fields that rely on smell monitoring for industrial and public purposes.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1722-1729
Number of pages8
JournalBiomaterials
Volume33
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2012

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) (No. 2011-0000331 , No. 2011K000682 , No. 2011-0020984 ). This research was supported by the WCU (World Class University) program through the NRF, funded by the MEST ( R31-10013 ), and funded by an NRF grant through the Korean government (MEST) (No. 2011-0017125 ).

Keywords

  • Antagonism
  • Conducting polymer nanotube
  • Human olfactory receptor
  • Nanobioelectronic nose

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