Jiang Yue, Matsunami Hiroaki
Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710, USA; University Program of Genetics and Genomics, Duke University, NC 27710, USA.
Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710, USA; Department of Neurobiology, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710, USA.
Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2015 Oct;34:54-60. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2015.01.014. Epub 2015 Feb 5.
In mammals, the perception of smell starts with the activation of odorant receptors (ORs) by volatile molecules in the environment. The mammalian OR repertoire has been subject to rapid evolution, and is highly diverse within the human population. Recent advances in the functional expression and ligand identification of ORs allow for functional analysis of OR evolution, and reveal that changes in OR protein sequences translate into high degrees of functional variations. Moreover, in several cases the functional variation of a single OR affects the perception of its cognate odor ligand, providing clues as to how an odor is coded at the receptor level.
在哺乳动物中,嗅觉的感知始于环境中的挥发性分子激活气味受体(ORs)。哺乳动物的OR库经历了快速进化,并且在人类群体中高度多样化。ORs功能表达和配体鉴定方面的最新进展使得对OR进化进行功能分析成为可能,并揭示出OR蛋白序列的变化转化为高度的功能变异。此外,在一些情况下,单个OR的功能变异会影响其同源气味配体的感知,这为气味在受体水平上的编码方式提供了线索。