WIKIMEDIA, HELENA PAFFENThe detection of chemical odors isn’t limited to the nose. Internal tissues, including the heart, liver, and gut, are also known to harbor olfactory receptors. “Only a tiny little amount of odorants are used by our receptors in the nose,” chemist Peter Schieberle of the Technical University of Munich told Discovery News. “Odor might have secondary functions in the human body.”
This week (July 7), a team described its research on the olfactory responses of the skin. Hanns Hatt of Ruhr University Bochum in Germany and colleagues examined the response of epidermal cells known as keratinocytes, which express an olfactory receptor called OR2AT4, along with at least four others. The researchers found that Sandalore, a synthetic sandalwood oil used in aromatherapy, perfumes, and skin care products all bound to the receptor, triggering cells to divide and migrate, processes characteristic of skin healing.
Specifically, cell proliferation increased by 32 percent and cell migration by nearly 50 percent when cultured keratinocytes were exposed to high concentrations Sandalore—1,000 times greater than is needed to activated olfactory receptors in the nose—for five days. Another synthetic sandalwood scent, called Brahmanol, had ...
