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Scientists Unveil ‘Long Lost’ Map for Smell

It has been much harder to navigate the complex landscape of the nose, with its enormous array... “It’s extraordinarily satisfying,” Dr. Dulac said. In subsequent experiments, Dr. Datta’s...

NYTIMES 입력 2026.04.29 18:04 0

Scientists Unveil ‘Long Lost’ Map for Smell

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Scientists Unveil ‘Long Lost’ Map for Smell

The odor receptors in the nose are not distributed at random but organized in a precise spatial pattern, two new studies reveal.

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A microscope photo of a cross-section of the nose of a mouse that was genetically modified to express green fluorescent protein in smell neurons. A small subset of dying neurons is labeled in red.

Credit...

Datta Lab

Emily Anthes

April 29, 2026,

5:02 a.m. ET

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Over the last century, scientists have mapped several of the body’s sensory systems in microscopic detail, discovering that the cells that process sight, sound and touch are arranged in predictable spatial patterns.

It has been much harder to navigate the complex landscape of the nose, with its enormous array of scent receptors. For years, many scientists believed that these receptors were distributed mostly at random.

Now, two teams of scientists have managed to map the nose of a mouse. Using advanced genetic sequencing and imaging techniques, the researchers found that each of the 1,100 different types of olfactory receptors in the mouse nose occupied a distinct and predictable position, consistent from mouse to mouse.

The findings, which were published in a pair of papers in the journal Cell on Tuesday, represent the first comprehensive, fine-scale maps of odor receptors in the nose. They suggest that topographic maps may be as fundamental to olfaction as they are to other senses.

“The organization of information in space is a major organizing principle for all sensory systems, and that is what has, until now, made olfaction super weird,” said Sandeep Robert Datta, a neurobiologist at Harvard University and an author of

one of the new papers

. “We have, to some extent, unveiled this long lost map for smell.”

Scientists have not yet demonstrated that the same sort of map exists in the human nose and do not yet understand why the receptors are arranged in the way that they are. But the research sheds light on how the olfactory system develops and paves the way for a better understanding of an often overlooked sense.

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