The in-print version of David Brann’s tour-de-force describing a map of the nose is now out, on the cover of Cell! The final version includes many new experiments not included in the initial bioRxiv post, so definitely check it out for the latest. At one level, this paper shows that there is a olfactory map in the nose – this map is built by the pattened expression of ~1100 odor receptors, each of which adopt a stereotyped and precise *mean* position along the dorsoventral extent of the epithelium.  On the one hand, this is amazing, as it makes the nose arguably the most patterned tissue in the nervous system. On the other hand, it is important to appreciate how this works — we show that olfactory stem cells have incredibly subtle biases in terms of which receptors their progeny express (and so there is a great deal of stochasticity in the underlying mechanisms that choose receptors), and yet macroscopically this probabilistic process yields a highly determined mean position for each receptor. David’s paper goes far beyond mere description, as it proposes a mechanism through which space is translated into identity (a dorsoventral retinoic acid gradient), identifies a transcriptional program present in both stem cells and mature sensory neurons that reflects spatial position, and reveals transcription factors and axon guidance genes that coordinately bias OR choice and specify axonal targeting in the olfactory bulb. The important question this paper poses: why are the receptors in the spatial order they are in? We have some crazy ideas about why that might be, which we are testing in the lab right now….more soon!