A New Family of Odorant Receptors in Drosophila

A New Family of Odorant Receptors in Drosophila

In the fruit fly Drosophila, not all olfactory sensory neurons express a seven transmembrane odorant receptor, suggesting that other types of odorant receptors might exist. Benton et al. (2009) now present evidence that a family of proteins related to ionotropic glutamate receptors is a previously unrecognized class of odorant receptors.

A Novel Family of Divergent Seven-Transmembrane Proteins Candidate Odorant Receptors in Drosophila

Although insects have proven to be valuable models for exploring the function, organization, and development of the olfactory system, the receptor molecules that bind odors have not been identified in any insect. We have developed a novel search algorithm, used it to search the Drosophila genomic sequence database, and identified a large multigene family encoding seven transmembrane domain prot...

Diversity and expression of odorant receptors in Drosophila

Olfactory perception translates abstract chemical features of odorants into meaningful neural information to elicit appropriate behavioral responses (Shepherd, 1994; Buck, 1996). Specialized bipolar olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) are responsible for the initial events in odor recognition. These have ciliated dendrites exposed to the environment, and a single axon that extends into the brain a...

A Unified Nomenclature System for the Drosophila Odorant Receptors

A novel multigene family may encode odorant receptors.

The mammalian olfactory system can recognize and discriminate a large number of different odorant molecules. The detection of chemically distinct odorants presumably results from the association of odorous ligands with specific receptors on olfactory sensory neurons. To address the problem of olfactory perception at a molecular level, we have cloned and characterized 18 different members of an ...