Reisert Johannes, Restrepo Diego
Monell Chemical Senses Center, 3500 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Chem Senses. 2009 Sep;34(7):535-45. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjp028. Epub 2009 Jun 12.
The discovery of the odorant receptor (OR) family by Buck and Axel in 1991 provided a quantum jump in our understanding of olfactory function. However, the study of the responsiveness of ORs to odor ligands was challenging due to the difficulties in deorphanizing the receptors. In this manuscript, we review recent findings of OR responsiveness that have come about through improved OR deorphanization methods, site-directed mutagenesis, structural modeling studies, and studies of OR responses in situ in olfactory sensory neurons. Although there has been a major leap in our understanding of receptor-ligand interactions and how these contribute to the input to the olfactory system, an improvement of our understanding of receptor structure and dynamics and interactions with intracellular and extracellular proteins is necessary.
1991年,巴克和阿克塞尔发现了气味受体(OR)家族,这使我们对嗅觉功能的理解有了巨大飞跃。然而,由于受体去孤儿化存在困难,研究OR对气味配体的反应性具有挑战性。在本手稿中,我们回顾了通过改进的OR去孤儿化方法、定点诱变、结构建模研究以及嗅觉感觉神经元原位OR反应研究而获得的OR反应性的最新发现。尽管我们对受体-配体相互作用以及这些相互作用如何促进嗅觉系统的输入有了重大飞跃,但仍有必要进一步了解受体结构和动力学以及与细胞内和细胞外蛋白质的相互作用。