Olfactory and Taste Biosensor Using Human Receptors Combined With Nanodevices

We have five senses, which are the sense of vision, sound, touch, smell, and taste. Among these five senses, the sense of smell and taste is the chemical sense, while the other three senses are physical sense. Regarding the sense of vision and sound, human developed the devices which can measure their activating stimuli, which are light and vibration. However, we do not have any device which can measure the smell and taste. We still depend on the sensory evaluation using our own nose and tongue. In the smelling process of the human olfactory system, the initiation step in the odor recognition is the binding of odorants to the olfactory receptor proteins. Similarly in the tasting process for the bitter, sweet and umami tastes, the initial recognition step is also the binding of tastants to the taste receptor protein. Therefore, human’s olfactory and taste receptors can be used to develop the human-like bioelectronics nose and tongue. In this presentation, I am going to present a successful demonstration of olfactory and taste biosensor using human receptors combined with nanodevices.