The human olfactory receptor gene family
The human olfactory receptor gene family
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.0307882100
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发表时间：
2004-02-24
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Buck, LB
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Malnic, B;Godfrey, PA;Buck, LB
人类感知到各种各样的化学物质具有不同的气味。气味感知在鼻子中开始，其中气味由嗅觉受体（OR）的大家族检测。OR具有不同的蛋白质序列，但可以根据序列关系分配到亚家族。相同亚家族的成员具有相关的序列，并且可能识别结构上相关的气味剂。为了深入了解气味感知的机制，我们分析了人类OR基因家族。通过检索人类基因组数据库，我们确定了339个完整的OR基因和297个OR假基因。它们的基因组位置的测定表明，OR基因不均匀地分布在21条人类染色体上的51个不同位点中。序列比较显示，人类OR家族由172个亚家族组成。通过识别含有具有已知气味配体的OR或此类OR的人类同源物的亚家族来预测可被某些亚家族识别的气味结构的类型。每个OR亚家族成员的染色体位置分析显示，大多数亚家族由单个染色体位点编码。此外，许多基因座只编码一个或几个亚科，这表明基因组的不同部分可能在某种程度上参与了不同类型的气味结构基序的检测。
Humans perceive an immense variety of chemicals as having distinct odors. Odor perception initiates in the nose, where odorants are detected by a large family of olfactory receptors (ORs). ORs have diverse protein sequences but can be assigned to subfamilies on the basis of sequence relationships. Members of the same subfamily have related sequences and are likely to recognize structurally related odorants. To gain insight into the mechanisms underlying odor perception, we analyzed the human OR gene family. By searching the human genome database, we identified 339 intact OR genes and 297 OR pseudogenes. Determination of their genomic locations showed that OR genes are unevenly distributed among 51 different loci on 21 human chromosomes. Sequence comparisons showed that the human OR family is composed of 172 subfamilies. Types of odorant structures that may be recognized by some subfamilies were predicted by identifying subfamilies that contain ORs with known odor ligands or human homologs of such ORs. Analysis of the chromosomal locations of members of each OR subfamily revealed that most subfamilies are encoded by a single chromosomal locus. Moreover, many loci encode only one or a few subfamilies, suggesting that different parts of the genome may, to some extent, be involved in the detection of different types of odorant structural motifs.