  In this paper we explore relevant electrical properties of two olfactory
receptors (ORs), one from rat OR I7 and the other from human OR 17-40, which
are of interest for the realization of smell nanobiosensors. The investigation
compares existing experiments, coming from electrochemical impedance
spectroscopy, with the theoretical expectations obtained from an impedance
network protein analogue, recently developed. The changes in the response due
to the sensing action of the proteins are correlated with the conformational
change undergone by the single protein. The satisfactory agreement between
theory and experiments points to a promising development of a new class of
nanobiosensors based on the electrical properties of sensing proteins.
