Olfactory receptors for a smell sensor: A comparative study of the electrical responses of rat I7 and human 17-40

TL;DR

This study compares the electrical responses of rat and human olfactory receptors to develop nanobiosensors, showing good agreement between experimental data and theoretical models, indicating potential for advanced smell detection devices.

Contribution

It introduces a combined experimental and theoretical analysis of olfactory receptor electrical properties for nanobiosensor development.

Findings

Electrical responses correlate with protein conformational changes.

Theoretical models align well with experimental impedance data.

Potential for creating new smell nanobiosensors based on these proteins.

Abstract

In this paper we explore relevant electrical properties of two olfactory receptors (ORs), one from rat OR I7 and the other from human OR 17-40, which are of interest for the realization of smell nanobiosensors. The investigation compares existing experiments, coming from electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, with the theoretical expectations obtained from an impedance network protein analogue, recently developed. The changes in the response due to the sensing action of the proteins are correlated with the conformational change undergone by the single protein. The satisfactory agreement between theory and experiments points to a promising development of a new class of nanobiosensors based on the electrical properties of sensing proteins.