The Electrical Properties of Olfactory Receptors in the Development of Biological Smell Sensors

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.