Nobel medicine prize to American duo for sense of smell research

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - American research duo Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for explaining how our most enigmatic sense, that of smell, functions.
Axel and Buck "have in several elegant, often parallel, studies clarified the olfactory system, from the molecular level to the organization of the cells," the Nobel jury said in its citation.
In pioneering studies, they discovered a large gene family which is the basis for our ability to recognize approximately 10,000 different odours, such as lilacs, wine or strawberries and remember them all our lives.
Axel works at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at New York's Columbia University, while Buck works at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.