You are unique. And so is your sense of smell.

The 400 genes responsible for our olfaction noses can vary greatly  - with more  than 900,000 variations of those genes. And even if your genomes are similar, the receptors can be about 30 percent different.

It's very commonif one person likes a certain smell and the other person doesn't. But a surprise finding by Duke researchers shows that no two people smell things the same way. They are very different at the receptor levels 

Genes code odor receptors, but how are these receptors activated? Researchers from Duke, Rockefeller University, University of Pennsyklvania and Monnell
identified 27 receptors that had a significant response to at least one odorant they used in the study thus doubling the number of known odorant-activated receptors (now 40).

So we are now one little step closer to understanding the consequences of these receptor activation and understanding the sense of smell. 


The missense of smell: functional variability in the human odorant receptor repertoire, Joel D Mainland, Andreas Keller, et al. Nature Neuroscience, Early online Dec. 8, 2013. DOI: 10.1038/nn.3598