Drosophila odorant-binding proteins

Using a specific antibody, Shanbhag and collaborators [34] demonstrated that LUSH is expressed in sensilla trichodea of the Drosophila antennae along with two other putative odorant-binding proteins Obp83a (PBPRP-3, OS-F) and Obp83b (OS-E). When antennal sections of the LUSH-deficient mutant were la-... 

Kim M. S., Repp A. and Smith D. P. (1998) LUSH odorant-binding protein mediates chemosensory responses to alcohols in Drosophila melanogaster. Genetics 150, 711-721. 

Pikielny C. W., Hasan G., Rouyer F. and Rosbash M. (1994). Members of a Family of drosophila putative odorant-binding proteins are expressed in different subsets of olfactory hairs. Neuron 12, 35 -9. 

Graham L. A. and Davies P. L. (2002) The odorant-binding proteins of Drosophila melanogaster annotation and characterization of a divergent gene family. Gene 292, 43-55. 

Hekmat-Scafe D. S., Scafe C. R., McKinney A. J. and Tanouye M. A. (2002) Genomewide analysis of the odorant-binding protein gene family in Drosophila melanogaster. Genome Res. 12, 1357-1369. 

Park S. K., Shanbhag S. R., Wang Q., Hasan G., Steinbrecht R. A. and Pikielny C. W. (2000) Expression patterns of two putative odorant-binding proteins in the olfactory organs of Drosophila melanogaster have different implications for their functions. Cell Tissue Res. 300, 181-197. 

Shanbhag S. R., Hekmat-Scafe D., Kim M. S., Park S. K., Carlson J. R., Pikielny C., Smith D. P. and Steinbrecht R. A. (2001a) Expression mosaic of odorant-binding proteins in Drosophila olfactory organs. Microsc. Res. Tech. 55, 297-306. 

Vogt R. G. (2002) Odorant binding proteins of the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae possible orthologues of the OS-E and OS-F OBPs of Drosophila melanogaster. J. Chem. Ecol. 28, RC29-RC35 (http //www.kluweronline.com/issn/0098-0331)... 

Recently, a putative olfactory receptor from Drosophila, Or43a (Clyne et al., 1999 Vosshall et al., 1999), has been expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes (Wetzel et al., 2001). The receptor expressed in a heterologous cell system was activated by four odorants, i.e. cyclohexanone, cyclohexanol, benzaldehyde, and benzyl alcohol (Wetzel et al., 2001). These experiments not only provided direct evidence for the function of the Or gene, but also demonstrated that the olfactory receptor can be stimulated without an odorant-binding protein. It was demonstrated earlier that PBP was not necessary to obtain pheromone-dependent responses in cultured olfactory receptor neurons of Manduca sexta (Stengl et al., 1992). The possibility that OBPs have been produced in vitro and were present in cultured ORNs could not be excluded. The same argument can not be raised for the heterologous expression of the Drosophila olfactory receptor. While the evidence that Xenopus oocytes responded to odorants in the absence of OBPs does not support the OBP-odorant complex model, it also demonstrated that OBPs are essential for the kinetics of the olfactory system (see below). 

Hekmat-Scafe D. S., Steinbrecht R. A. and Carlson J. R. (1997) Coexpression of two odorant-binding protein homologs in Drosophila implications for olfactory coding. J. Neurosci. 17, 1616-1624. 

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