de Bruyne Marien, Warr Coral G
Institut Biologie, Neurobiologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Bioessays. 2006 Jan;28(1):23-34. doi: 10.1002/bies.20338.
Animals use their chemosensory systems to detect and discriminate among chemical cues in the environment. Remarkable progress has recently been made in our knowledge of the molecular and cellular basis of chemosensory perception in insects, based largely on studies in Drosophila. This progress has been possible due to the identification of gene families for olfactory and gustatory receptors, the use of electro-physiological recording techniques on sensory neurons, the multitude of genetic manipulations that are available in this species, and insights from several insect model systems. Recent studies show that the superfamily of chemoreceptor proteins represent the essential elements in chemosensory coding, endowing chemosensory neurons with their abilities to respond to specific sets of odorants, tastants or pheromones. Investigating how insects detect chemicals in their environment can show us how receptor protein structures relate to ligand binding, how nervous systems process complex information, and how chemosensory systems and genes evolve.
动物利用其化学感应系统来检测和区分环境中的化学信号。近年来，我们在昆虫化学感应感知的分子和细胞基础方面取得了显著进展，这在很大程度上得益于对果蝇的研究。由于确定了嗅觉和味觉受体的基因家族，在感觉神经元上使用电生理记录技术，该物种可用的多种基因操作，以及来自多个昆虫模型系统的见解，才使得这一进展成为可能。最近的研究表明，化学感受器蛋白超家族是化学感应编码的基本要素，赋予化学感应神经元对特定气味剂、味觉剂或信息素作出反应的能力。研究昆虫如何检测其环境中的化学物质，可以让我们了解受体蛋白结构与配体结合的关系、神经系统如何处理复杂信息，以及化学感应系统和基因如何进化。
