Sense and sensibility: Silicon analogues of the lily-of-the-valley odorants lilial and bourgeonal demonstrate that the electronic surface structure determines the interaction of an odorant with its olfactory receptor. The subtle changes in the stereoelectronic properties enable a comparison of in vivo, in vitro, and in silico data. Odor thresholds, as well as the swimming behavior of sperm cells, correlate well with the binding energies obtained from a computational model of the hOR17-4 receptor.
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Doszczak et al. (2007) studied this question.