Olfactory receptors articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animals find and stay close to resources by altering their locomotion in response to odors that signal resources. Here the authors identify, using Drosophila locomotion in response to odor, a simple strategy that adapts its motor program to sensory context automatically.

    • Liangyu Tao
    • , Samuel P. Wechsler
    •  & Vikas Bhandawat

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors show that the Drosophila master regulator WAKE modulates the secretion of insulin-like peptides, triggering a decrease in 20-hydroxyecdysone levels. This lowers the perception of a male-specific sex pheromone and explains why WAKE-deficient Drosophila flies show male-male courtship behaviour.

    • Shiu-Ling Chen
    • , Bo-Ting Liu
    •  & Tsai-Feng Fu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Male orchid bees collect scents from the environment to attract females for mating. Here, Brand et al. combine population genomic, perfume chemistry, and functional analyses to show how divergence in odorant receptor genes may be driving reproductive divergence between two orchid bee species.

    • Philipp Brand
    • , Ismael A. Hinojosa-Díaz
    •  & Santiago R. Ramírez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inter-organismal signaling is essential for animals to navigate and survive in their natural environment, yet is unclear how these chemical communication channels may have evolved. Here, authors show that TYRA-2, an endogenous tyramine/octopamine receptor, is required for the chemosensation of an octopamine-derived pheromone and that this signaling system represents an inter-organismal communication channel that evolved via co-option of a neurotransmitter and its cognate receptor

    • Christopher D. Chute
    • , Elizabeth M. DiLoreto
    •  & Jagan Srinivasan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In Drosophila antenna, an unusual non-synaptic form of lateral inhibition occurs between subtypes of compartmentalized olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs). Here, authors show that direct electrical (ephaptic) interactions mediate lateral inhibition between ORNs, with physically larger ORNs dominating ephaptic interactions.

    • Ye Zhang
    • , Tin Ki Tsang
    •  & Chih-Ying Su

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Olfactory experience can alter the relative abundance of neurons expressing specific chemoreceptors. Here, the authors demonstrate that the distinct odor experiences of sex-separated male and female mice induce sex-specific differences in the abundance of neurons that detect sexually dimorphic odors.

    • Carl van der Linden
    • , Susanne Jakob
    •  & Stephen W. Santoro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increasing evidence suggest that olfactory receptors can carry additional functions besides olfaction. Here, Chéret et al. show that stimulation of the olfactory receptor ORT2A4 by the odorant Sandalore® stimulates growth of human scalp hair follicles ex vivo, suggesting the use of ORT2A4-targeting odorants as hair growth-promoting agents.

    • Jérémy Chéret
    • , Marta Bertolini
    •  & Ralf Paus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Odorous chemicals broadly activate subsets of olfactory receptors in the nose, but how individual receptors contribute to behavioral sensitivity is not clear. Here, the authors demonstrate that detection thresholds in mice are set solely by the highest affinity receptor for a given odorant.

    • Adam Dewan
    • , Annika Cichy
    •  & Thomas Bozza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    “Each olfactory sensory neuron expresses a single odorant receptor gene from either class I or class II genes. Here, the authors identify an enhancer for mouse class I genes, that is highly conserved, and regulates most class I genes expression by acting over ~ 3 megabases within the whole cluster.”

    • Tetsuo Iwata
    • , Yoshihito Niimura
    •  & Junji Hirota

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC) mediate the interactions between individuals in eusocial insects, but the sensory receptors for CHCs are unclear. Here the authors show that in ants such as H. saltator, the 9-exon subfamily of odorant receptors (HsOrs) responds to CHCs, and ectopic expression of HsOrs in Drosophila neurons imparts responsiveness to CHCs.

    • Gregory M. Pask
    • , Jesse D. Slone
    •  & Anandasankar Ray

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The range of odours that an insect can detect depends on its olfactory receptors. Here, the authors functionally characterize the olfactory receptor repertoire of the mothSpodoptera littoralis using the Drosophilaempty neuron system and reconstruct the evolution of these receptors in the Lepidoptera.

    • Arthur de Fouchier
    • , William B. Walker III
    •  & Emmanuelle Jacquin-Joly

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mosquitoes use olfactory cues to locate their host. Here, Riabinina et al. use genetic labelling of olfactory receptor neurons in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiaeto show that these neurons project to the antennal lobe, a known insect olfactory centre, and the subesophageal zone, a region previously linked to gustatory processing.

    • Olena Riabinina
    • , Darya Task
    •  & Christopher J. Potter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the basis of odour perception and discrimination is a challenging task, due to the inherent complexity of the olfactory system. Here, the authors use a medicinal chemistry approach to derive biologically relevant rules for odorant classification.

    • Erwan Poivet
    • , Zita Peterlin
    •  & Stuart Firestein

  • Article |

    The structure of insect odorant receptors (ORs) has remained elusive due to their lack of homology to other proteins and the inability to obtain OR crystals. Here, the authors use amino acid evolutionary covariation patterns to fold these proteins de novoand generate the first three-dimensional models of insect ORs.

    • Thomas A. Hopf
    • , Satoshi Morinaga
    •  & Richard Benton

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