Professor Dr Hanns Hatt (✝︎)

Hanns Hatt is distinguished for many contributions to chemosensation in vertebrates and invertebrates. The majority of theses were made from the Department of Cell Physiology of the Ruhr-University Bochum, which he chairs for more than twenty years and developed into a world renowned institution in this field. He made scientific contributions to research in the field of odour perception in vertebrates, especially humans and also invertebrates, e.g. drosophila. His promising work about structure and function of olfactory receptor proteins is of general interest.
In his lab the first human olfactory receptor could be deorphanized as well as the first olfactory receptor from invertebrates (drosophila). Using modern imaging and electrophysiological technologies he could demonstrate that the structure and the signalling of olfactory receptor proteins is completely different in vertebrates and invertebrates. In his department for the very first time it was shown that olfactory receptor proteins in humans were functionally expressed outside the nose in different tissues, like testis, prostate and skin. In his lab it could be demonstrated for the first time that human spermatozoa expressed the olfactory receptor hOR17-4 and application of the activating ligand (Bourgeonal) elicits a positive chemotactic and chemokinetic behaviour. The enormous importance of ectopically expressed olfactory receptors for basic research and clinical application could be further demonstrated with the olfactory receptor hOR31G1 in human prostate cancer cells.
Another remarkable finding of Hanns Hatt comes from his time in the department of Josef Dudel, Technical University Munich. He and his colleagues could show that ligand activated ion channels are able to open in the millisecond range and desensitize afterwards within the same time scale. That could only be demonstrated by using a new ultra fast application technology which was developed in the lab. Using this new method for the first time glutamate ion channels in vertebrates and invertebrates could be measured.