The molecular basis of sugar detection by an insect taste receptor.

ABSTRACT: Animals crave sugars because of their energy potential and the pleasurable sensation of tasting sweetness. Yet all sugars are not metabolically equivalent, requiring mechanisms to detect and differentiate between chemically similar sweet substances. Insects use a family of ionotropic gustatory receptors to discriminate sugars¹, each of which is selectively activated by specific sweet molecules^2-6. Here, to gain insight into the molecular basis of sugar selectivity, we determined structures of Gr9, a gustatory receptor from the silkworm Bombyx mori (BmGr9), in the absence and presence of its sole activating ligand, D-fructose. These structures, along with structure-guided mutagenesis and functional assays, illustrate how D-fructose is enveloped by a ligand-binding pock

SUBMITTER: Gomes JV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11062906 | biostudies-literature | 2024 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature