Recent concepts about sense of smell, odorant receptors and physiology of olfaction- an insight

The sense of olfaction reached its zenith in development much earlier than other special senses. Olfaction is much more acute than the other senses, exhibits both high sensitivity for odours and high discrimination between them. This plays a very important role even in the social and behavioral aspects of human beings. Recent studies using molecular genetics, electrophysiology and behavioral analysis have elucidated the mechanism, connectivity and functions of olfaction in different organisms. This review is a general topic of interest and discusses the recent advancements regarding the chemical nature of human olfactory receptors, mechanism of olfactory transduction, nomenclature and families of olfactory receptors, olfactory coding, smell discrimination in different animals and olfactory memory.