Nanobiosensors Based on Individual Olfactory Receptors

In the framework of the SPOT-NOSED European project, nanoscale sensing elements bearing olfactory receptors and grafted onto functionalized gold substrates are used as odorant detectors. We thus develop a new concept of nanobioelectronic nose, through sensitive impedancemetric measurement of single receptor conformational change upon odorant ligand binding. A better specificity and lower detection thresholds than traditional physical sensors are expected.