Computational evaluation of interactions between olfactory receptor OR2W1 and its ligands

Enhancement of transcription efficiency by TAR-Tat system increases the functional expression of human olfactory receptors

Humans have approximately 400 different olfactory receptors (hORs) and recognize odorants through the repertoire of hOR responses. Although the cell surface expression of hORs is critical to evaluate their response, hORs are poorly expressed on the surface of heterologous cells. To address this problem, previous studies have focused on hOR transportation to the membrane. Nevertheless, the response pattern of hORs to odorants has yet to be successfully linked, and the response sensitivity still remains to be improved. In this study, we demonstrate that increasing the transcriptional level can result in a significant increase in cell surface and functional expression of hORs. We used the TAR-Tat system, which increases the transcription efficiency through positive feedback, and found that OR1A1, OR6N2, and OR51M1 exhibited robust expression. Moreover, this system induces enhanced hOR responses to odorants, thus defining four hORs as novel n-hexanal receptors and n-hexanal is an inverse agonist to one of them. Our results suggested that using the TAR-Tat system and increasing the transcriptional level of hORs can help understanding the relationship between hORs and odorants that were previously undetectable. This finding could facilitate the understanding of the sense of smell by decoding the repertoire of hOR responses.

The structure and function of olfactory receptors

Olfactory receptors (ORs) form the most important chemosensory receptor family responsible for our sense of smell in the nasal olfactory epithelium. This receptor family belongs to the class A G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Recent research has indicated that ORs are involved in many nonolfactory physiological processes in extranasal tissue, such as the brain, pancreas, and testes, and implies the possible role of their dysregulation in various diseases. The recently released structures of OR51E2 and consensus OR52 have also unveiled the uniqueness of ORs from other class A GPCR members. In this review, we discuss these recent developments and computational modeling efforts toward understanding the structural properties of unresolved ORs, which could guide potential future OR-targeted drug discovery.