I am University Professor and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Columbia University Medical Center. In addition, I am a member of the Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics; Neuroscience and the Comprehensive Cancer Center. I obtained an A.B. from Columbia College and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins Medical School. In earlier studies with colleagues Michael Wigler and Saul Silverstein, gene transfer techniques were developed that permit the introduction of virtually any gene into any cell. These studies not only allowed for a novel approach to isolate genes but also provided a detailed analysis of how they worked. At the same time, these experiments allowed for the production of an increasingly large number of clinically important proteins. These studies also led to the isolation and functional analysis of a gene for the lymphocyte surface protein, CD4, the cellular receptor for the AIDS virus, HIV. I then began to apply molecular biology to problems in neuroscience with the expectation that genetics could interface with neuroscience to approach the tenuous relationship between genes, behavior, and perception. My studies on the logic of the sense of smell revealed over a thousand genes involved in the recognition of odors and provided insight into how genes shape our perception of the sensory environment. My current work centers on how the recognition of odors is translated into an internal representation of sensory quality in the brain and how this representation leads to meaningful thoughts and behavior. I am University Professor and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Columbia University Medical Center. In addition, I am a member of the Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics; Neuroscience and the Comprehensive Cancer Center. I obtained an A.B. from Columbia College and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins Medical School. In earlier studies with colleagues Michael Wigler and Saul Silverstein, gene transfer techniques were developed that permit the introduction of virtually any gene into any cell. These studies not only allowed for a novel approach to isolate genes but also provided a detailed analysis of how they worked. At the same time, these experiments allowed for the production of an increasingly large number of clinically important proteins. These studies also led to the isolation and functional analysis of a gene for the lymphocyte surface protein, CD4, the cellular receptor for the AIDS virus, HIV. I then began to apply molecular biology to problems in neuroscience with the expectation that genetics could interface with neuroscience to approach the tenuous relationship between genes, behavior, and perception. My studies on the logic of the sense of smell revealed over a thousand genes involved in the recognition of odors and provided insight into how genes shape our perception of the sensory environment. My current work centers on how the recognition of odors is translated into an internal representation of sensory quality in the brain and how this representation leads to meaningful thoughts and behavior.

Mammals possess an olfactory system of inordinate discriminatory power. We are studying how the diversity and specificity of olfactory perception is accomplished. Our analysis of the patterns of expression of the odorant receptor genes, coupled with earlier electrophysiologic experiments have provided a logic for olfactory discrimination. Individual olfactory sensory neurons express only one of a thousand receptor genes. Neurons expressing a given receptor, although randomly distributed in domains in the epithelium, project their axons to a small number of topographically fixed loci or glomeruli in the olfactory bulb. These data support a model of olfactory coding in which discrimination of odor quality would result from the detection of specific spatial patterns of activity in the olfactory bulb.