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The molecular biology of olfactory perception
Author(s) -
Goodenough Peter W.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
international journal of food science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.831
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1365-2621
pISSN - 0950-5423
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2621.1998.00158.x
Subject(s) - biology , olfactory receptor , receptor , transduction (biophysics) , transmembrane protein , olfactory system , transmembrane domain , neuroscience , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , computational biology , biochemistry
This review discusses the anatomy of human odorant reception, with particular reference to the seven‐helical transmembrane‐protein superfamily of olfactory receptors, the concept of a novel multigene olfactory‐receptor family, the location of the olfactory‐receptor genes in the human genome and the characterization of the receptor proteins by cloning and overexpression. It then turns to the evidence for secondary message transduction following odorant binding, and the latest evidence on the structural analysis of G‐protein coupled signalling as well as how the binding of odorant molecules to the transmembrane olfactory receptors is transmitted through the neural pathways to the brain, including the remarkable success in generating cDNA libraries from single neurons.