Membrane topology of the Drosophila OR83b odorant receptor

• By analogy to mammals, odorant receptors (ORs) in insects, such as Drosophila melanogaster, have long been thought to belong to the G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily. However, recent work has cast doubt on this assumption and has tentatively suggested an inverted topology compared to the canonical N(out) - C(in) 7 transmembrane (TM) GPCR topology, at least for some Drosophila ORs. Here, we report a detailed topology mapping of the Drosophila OR83b receptor using engineered glycosylation sites as topology markers. Our results are inconsistent with a classical GPCR topology and show that OR83b has an intracellular N-terminus, an extracellular C-terminus, and 7TM helices.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Bioinformatik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Bioinformatics (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Drosophila melanogaster

Membrane protein

Odorant receptor

Topology

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)