IMAGINE being able to tell whether a friend had passed by recently just by sniffing the ground. Dogs can do it, so why can't we? Admittedly, they have a bit of an advantage, as their noses contain between 20 and 40 times as many smell receptors. But could we go one better?

Debra Ann Fadool of Florida State University thinks so. She has discovered how humans might be made as sensitive to complex smells as dogs and wolves. Fadool has stumbled on a gene, called Kv1.3, which might just give us a way to do it. In mice, deleting it increases sensitivity to odours by a factor of between 1000 and 10,000. Blocking the gene also made these supersensitive mice better at discriminating between smells.

¶ Saturday, January 07, 2006