7. Turins explanation for these smelly facts invokes the idea that the smell signal in olfactory receptor proteins is triggered not by an odour molecules shape, but by its vibrations, which can enourage an electron to jump between two parts of the receptor in a quantum-mechanical process called tunnelling. This electron movement could initiate the smell signal being sent to the brain.
8. This would explain why isotopes can smell different: their vibration frequencies are changed if the atoms are heavier. Turins mechanism, says Marshall Stoneham of the UCL team, is more like swipe-card identification than a key fitting a lock.
9. Vibration-assisted electron tunnelling can undoubtedly occur it is used in an experimental technique for measuring molecular vibrations. The question is whether this is possible in the nose, says Stonehams colleague, Andrew Horsfield.
10. Stoneham says that when he first heard about Turins idea, while Turin was himself based at UCL, I didnt believe it. But, he adds, because it was an interesting idea, I thought I should prove it couldnt work. I did some simple calculations, and only then began to feel Luca could be right. Now Stoneham and his co-workers have done the job more thoroughly, in a paper soon to be published in Physical Review Letters.
11. The UCL team calculated the rates of electron hopping in a nose receptor that has an odorant molecule bound to it. This rate depends on various properties of the biomolecular system that are not known, but the researchers could estimate these parameters based on typical values for molecules of this sort.
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