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Towards an understanding of the structural basis for insect olfaction by odorant receptors

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posted on 2023-05-03, 14:41 authored by Colm Carraher, Julie DalzielJulie Dalziel, Melissa Jordan, David Christie, Richard Newcomb, Andrew Kralicek
Insects have co-opted a unique family of seven transmembrane proteins for odour sensing. Odorant receptors are believed to have evolved from gustatory receptors somewhere at the base of the Hexapoda and have expanded substantially to become the dominant class of odour recognition elements within the Insecta. These odorant receptors comprise an obligate co-receptor, Orco, and one of a family of highly divergent odorant "tuning" receptors. The two subunits are thought to come together at some as-yet unknown stoichiometry to form a functional complex that is capable of both ionotropic and metabotropic signalling. While there are still no 3D structures for these proteins, site-directed mutagenesis, resonance energy transfer, and structural modelling efforts, all mainly on Drosophila odorant receptors, are beginning to inform hypotheses of their structures and how such complexes function in odour detection. Some of the loops, especially the second extracellular loop that has been suggested to form a lid over the binding pocket and the extracellular regions of some transmembrane helices, especially the third and to a less extent the sixth and seventh, have been implicated in ligand recognition in tuning receptors. The possible interaction between Orco and tuning receptor subunits through the final intracellular loop and the adjacent transmembrane helices is thought to be important for transducing ligand binding into receptor activation. Potential phosphorylation sites and a calmodulin binding site in the second intracellular loop of Orco are also thought to be involved in regulating channel gating. A number of new methods have recently been developed to express and purify insect odorant receptor subunits in recombinant expression systems. These approaches are enabling high throughput screening of receptors for agonists and antagonists in cell-based formats, as well as producing protein for the application of biophysical methods to resolve the 3D structure of the subunits and their complexes.

History

Rights statement

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language

  • English

Does this contain Māori information or data?

  • No

Publisher

Elsevier

Journal title

Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

ISSN

0965-1748

Citation

Carraher, C., Dalziel, J., Jordan, M. D., Christie, D. L., Newcomb, R. D., & Kralicek, A. V. (2015). Towards an understanding of the structural basis for insect olfaction by odorant receptors. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 66, 31-41. doi: 10.1016/j.ibmb.2015.09.010

Funder

Plant and Food Research Limited

Contract number

A14953

Job code

50841

Report number

FBP 56157

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