Key Points
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Vertebrates and insects use various chemosensory subsystems to cope with a broad range of chemicals.
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Vertebrates and insects use large repertoires of receptors to detect odorants. The size of repertoires among species varies considerably.
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The mechanisms of receptor signalling differ between vertebrates and insects. Vertebrates use metabotropic G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), whereas insects use ionotropic receptors that act as ligand-gated ion channels.
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Insect olfactory receptors have also been suggested to function as GPCRs; however, this idea remains controversial.
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Vertebrate olfactory neurons have a rich network of feedback and feedforward mechanisms that regulate the cell's sensitivity.
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Both vertebrates and insects use a combinatorial code to identify and discriminate odours. The basis of this strategy is the one receptor–one neuron hypothesis.
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In general, each receptor can respond to many odorants — that is, each receptor has a broad receptive range. However, some receptors, particularly those for social cues, are specifically tuned to a single or a few odorants.
Abstract
Vertebrates and insects have evolved complex repertoires of chemosensory receptors to detect and distinguish odours. With a few exceptions, vertebrate chemosensory receptors belong to the family of G protein-coupled receptors that initiate a cascade of cellular signalling events and thereby electrically excite the neuron. Insect receptors, which are structurally and genetically unrelated to vertebrate receptors, are a complex of two distinct molecules that serves both as a receptor for the odorant and as an ion channel that is gated by binding of the odorant. Metabotropic signalling in vertebrates provides a rich panoply of positive and negative regulation, whereas ionotropic signalling in insects enhances processing speed.
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Acknowledgements
I thank H. Fried and A. Aho for preparation of the figures and H. Krause for preparing the manuscript. I am particularly grateful to O. Ernst, Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany, for the GPCR structures in the Supplementary information. Because of space limitations, I was unable to cite all relevant primary literature.
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Supplementary information
Supplementary Information S1 (box)
Guanylyl cyclase-expressing olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) (PDF 215 kb)
Supplementary Information S2 (box)
An excursion on G protein-coupled receptors (PDF 191 kb)
Supplementary Information S3 (figure)
Insect pheromones (cVA in Drosophila) bind to specialized pheromone-binding proteins (LUSH in Drosophila). (PDF 133 kb)
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Glossary
- Odorant
-
A chemical compound that stimulates the sense of smell. For terrestrial animals, odorants are small, volatile molecules; for aquatic animals, odorants are water soluble.
- Pheromone
-
A chemical substance that is used for communication between members of the same species ('conspecifics'). It is released by an individual and detected by a conspecific.
- G protein-coupled receptor
-
(GPCR). A member of a large family of membrane receptors that initiates a cellular response through G proteins. It threads through the cell membrane seven times, and the transmembrane segments adopt an α-helical secondary structure. Therefore, GPCRs are often referred to as heptahelical or 7-TM receptors.
- Chemical receptive range
-
The number and chemical characteristics of the ligands that bind to an odorant receptor. It may be narrow (for example, only aliphatic alcohols of a certain length) or broad (for example, several different functional groups).
- Molecular dynamics simulation
-
A computational technique that uses numerical methods to predict the structure of a protein from its amino-acid sequence. It is also used to simulate the docking of a ligand to its receptor. As a starting point, previously solved protein structures (for example, of rhodopsin) are used as templates.
- Odorant-binding protein
-
A member of a diverse family of proteins that have been proposed to serve either as odorant scavengers or carriers that deliver the odorant or pheromone to the receptor.
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Kaupp, U. Olfactory signalling in vertebrates and insects: differences and commonalities. Nat Rev Neurosci 11, 188–200 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2789
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2789
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