The ability of an animal to detect, discriminate, and respond to odors depends on the function of its olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs), which in turn depends ultimately on odorant receptors. To understand the diverse mechanisms used by an animal in olfactory coding and computation, it is essential to understand the functional diversity of its odor receptors. The larval olfactory system of Dros...

Olfactory sensory neurons innervate the olfactory bulb in stereotyped patterns according to the odorant receptors they express. A study by Nakashima et al. in this issue demonstrates that the odorant receptor's level of intrinsic activity-in the absence of activating odorant-influences the guidance of olfactory axons to their targets.

The olfactory system of mammals allows the detection and discrimination thousands odors from environment. In mammals, odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) are considered responsible to carry odorant molecules across aqueous nasal mucus receptors (ORs). three-dimensional structure these presents eight antiparallel ?-sheets a short ?-helical segment close C terminus, typical lipocalins family. great a...

Antennal olfaction, which is extremely important for insect survival, mediates key behaviors such as host preference, mate choice, and oviposition site selection. In insects, odor detection is mediated by multiple proteins in the antenna, especially the odorant receptors (ORs) and ionotropic receptors (IRs), which ensure the specificity of the olfactory sensory neuron responses. In this study, ...

The vivid world of odors is recognized by the sense of olfaction. Olfaction in mice is mediated by a repertoire of about 1200 G Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) that are postulated to bind volatile odorant molecules and converting the extracellular signal into an intracellular signal by coupling with G protein Gαolf. Binding of the odorants to the receptors is thought to follow a combinatorial...

Expression of a receptor protein has, for the first time, been definitively correlated with sensitivity to a particular odorant. This receptor, expressed in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, appears to be distinct from the putative vertebrate odorant receptors.

The vertebrate olfactory system utilizes odorant receptors to receive and discriminate thousands of different chemical stimuli. An understanding of how these receptors encode information about an odorant's molecular structure requires a characterization of their ligand specificities. We employed an expression cloning strategy to identify a goldfish odorant receptor that is activated by amino ac...

Odorant receptors of zebrafish and C elegans were functionally expressed in vertebrate kidney cells (HEK293) using the eucaryotic expression vector pSMyc. Receptor-encoding cDNA cloned into this vector was expressed as a fusion protein with the N-terminal membrane import sequence of the guinea-pig serotonin receptor followed by a myc tag. Immunocytochemical evidence indicates that this strategy...