Margaret Bidwell Memorial Lecture: Deconstructing Smell
Description
The sense of smell allows mammals to perceive a multitude of environmental chemicals as having a distinct odor. It also mediates the detection of pheromones and predator odors that elicit innate responses. We are interested in how the olfactory system detects different chemicals and how the nervous system translates those chemicals into diverse perceptions and behaviors. Using a combination of molecular, cellular, and genetic approaches, we have identified families of receptors that initially detect odorants and pheromones in peripheral sense organs, asked how those receptors encode the identities of different chemicals, and investigated how the signals they generate are routed and organized in the nervous system to yield distinct perceptions and instinctive responses. Our work also touches on other neural circuits that affect emotions and innate drives that modulate behavior.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Linda Buck is a Full Member at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington. She received a B.S. from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She was previously Full Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Buck is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society.
Dr. Buck's research has provided key insights into the mechanisms that underlie our sense of smell. Her pioneering research has shed light on how thousands of odor molecules in the environment are first detected in the nose and then translated by the brain into diverse odor perceptions and instinctive behaviors. Dr. Buck has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Unilever Science Award, the Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Medical Research, the Gairdner Foundation International Award, and the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.