Structure-function relationship in olfactory receptors

Abstract

Olfactory receptors are key components in signal transduction. The sequence and structural analysis of olfactory receptors provides deep insights to understand their function. In this work, we have systematically analyzed the relationship between various physical, chemical, energetic and conformational properties of amino acid residues, and the change of half maximal effective concentration (EC50) due to amino acid substitutions. We observed that the odorant molecule (lignad) as well as amino acid properties are important for EC50. The inclusion of neighboring residues information of the mutants enhanced the correlation. Further, amino acid properties have been combined systematically and we obtained a correlation of 0.90-0.98 with functional data for different (goldfish, mouse and human) olfactory receptors. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.