The structural basis of odorant recognition in insect olfactory receptors.

ABSTRACT: Olfactory systems must detect and discriminate amongst an enormous variety of odorants¹. To contend with this challenge, diverse species have converged on a common strategy in which odorant identity is encoded through the combinatorial activation of large families of olfactory receptors^1-3, thus allowing a finite number of receptors to detect a vast chemical world. Here we offer structural and mechanistic insight into how an individual olfactory receptor can flexibly recognize diverse odorants. We show that the olfactory receptor MhOR5 from the jumping bristletail⁴ Machilis hrabei assembles as a homotetrameric odorant-gated ion channel with broad chemical tuning. Using cryo-electron microscopy, we elucidated the structure of MhOR5 in multiple gating states,

SUBMITTER: Del Marmol J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8410599 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature