Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Abstract— Antisera against the rat olfactory marker protein were prepared by injection of the homogeneous protein into a goat and a rabbit. When the antisera were tested by immunodiffusion against olfactory tissue extracts, many but not all mammalian species cross‐reacted against these antisera. Immunoprecipitin titrations with the goat antiserum generally showed higher cross‐reactivity against olfactory extracts from species more closely related to the rat. Human olfactory bulb extracts and non‐mammalian olfactory tissue extracts did not cross‐react with the antisera by either immunodiffusion tests or immunoprecipitin titrations, however, they did cross‐react when tested by a competitive binding radioimmunoassay using tritium‐labelled purified rat protein and the goat antibody. The olfactory marker protein which is an example of a brain protein specific to one cell, the olfactory chemoreceptor neuron, has a very wide species distribution, being present in rat, mouse, hamster, guinea‐pig, sheep, cow, rabbit, pig, dog, man, frog and garfish. Therefore it presumably plays an important and unique role related to the function of this primary chemosensory neuron.
Keller et al. (Sun,) studied this question.