The electrical properties of olfactory receptors in the development of biological smell sensors

Abstract

We present here the results of the investigation of the electrical properties of two olfactory receptors (ORs): rat, OR I7, and human, OR 17-40, which are of interest in the creation of smell nanobiosensors. Described here is our investigation comparing the results from experiments using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy with the theoretical predictions obtained from a recently developed impedance network protein analog. The changes in the OR response following excitation correlated with the protein conformational change. The satisfactory agreement between theory and experiment points to a promising development of a new class of nanobiosensors based on the electrical properties of sensing proteins. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2013.