Richard Axel
Richard Axel, M.D.,(b. July 2, 1946) is an American scientist whose work with the olfactory system won he and his former student Linda B. Buck the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004.
In their landmark paper published in 1991, Buck and Axel cloned olfactory receptors, showing that they belong to the family of G protein-coupled receptors. By analyzing rat DNA, they later estimated that there were approximately one thousand different genes for olfactory receptors in the mammalian genome.
Born in New York City, New York, Axel received his A.B. in 1967 from Columbia and his M.D. in 1970 from Johns Hopkins University. His primary research interest is on how the brain interprets the sense of smell, specifically mapping the parts of the brain that are sensitive to specific olfactory receptors. He is currently a university professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and of Pathology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
References
Buck, Linda, and Richard Axel. 1991. A Novel Multigene Family May Encode Odorant Receptors: A Molecular Basis for Odor Recognition. Cell 65:175-183.