Study: Your Lungs Can Smell

Your lungs can smell. That’s what new research suggests. But unlike the odor receptors in your nose, which send a message to the brain, the receptors in your lung cause the airways to constrict when a pungent or caustic odor such as cigarette smoke is sensed. The new class of cells, called pulmonary neuroendocrine cells, or PNECs, were discovered by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Iowa. “Our body plan is a tube within a tube, so our lungs and...

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