Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Adv Genet. 2011;76:1-26. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-386481-9.00001-8.
All animals use a sophisticated array of receptor proteins to sense their external and internal environments. Major advances have been made in recent years in understanding the molecular and genetic bases for sensory transduction in diverse modalities, indicating that both metabotropic and ionotropic pathways are important in sensory functions. Here, I review the historical background and recent advances in understanding the roles of a relatively newly discovered family of receptors, the degenerin/epithelial sodium channels (DEG/ENaC). These animal-specific cation channels show a remarkable sequence and functional diversity in different species and seem to exert their functions in diverse sensory modalities. Functions for DEG/ENaC channels have been implicated in mechanosensation as well as chemosensory transduction pathways. In spite of overall sequence diversity, all family members share a unique protein topology that includes just two transmembrane domains and an unusually large and highly structured extracellular domain, that seem to be essential for both their mechanical and chemical sensory functions. This review will discuss many of the recent discoveries and controversies associated with sensory function of DEG/ENaC channels in both vertebrate and invertebrate model systems, covering the role of family members in taste, mechanosensation, and pain.
所有动物都使用一系列复杂的受体蛋白来感知外部和内部环境。近年来，人们在理解不同感觉模式的感觉转导的分子和遗传基础方面取得了重大进展，这表明代谢型和离子型途径在感觉功能中都很重要。在这里，我回顾了相对较新发现的受体家族——退行性/上皮钠离子通道（DEG/ENaC）的历史背景和最新进展。这些动物特异性阳离子通道在不同物种中表现出显著的序列和功能多样性，似乎在多种感觉模式中发挥作用。DEG/ENaC 通道的功能已被牵涉到机械感觉以及化学感觉转导途径中。尽管整体序列多样性很大，但所有家族成员都具有独特的蛋白质拓扑结构，仅包含两个跨膜结构域和一个异常大且高度结构化的细胞外结构域，这似乎对其机械和化学感觉功能都是必不可少的。本综述将讨论与脊椎动物和无脊椎动物模型系统中 DEG/ENaC 通道的感觉功能相关的许多最新发现和争议，涵盖家族成员在味觉、机械感觉和疼痛中的作用。
