High impact information on OR3A1

• We found that OR17-40 efficiently translocated to the plasma membrane only at low expression, whereas at higher biosynthesis the receptor accumulated in intracellular compartments [1].
• Here, the complete life cycle of the human odorant receptor OR17-40 was directly monitored in living cells by ensemble and single-molecule imaging, using a double-labeling strategy [1].
• Molecular properties of odorant compounds essential for activation of the human olfactory receptor hOR17-40 were investigated using a collection of 23 variants of its cognate ligand helional [2].
• Interestingly, cells with a low EGFP fluorescence intensity exhibited efficient hOR17-40 cell surface targeting and odorant-evoked signal transduction; in contrast, highly fluorescent cells displayed mainly incorrectly targeted, intracellular receptors [2].
• Fluorescence-activated cell sorting was used to separate hOR17-40-expressing cells on the basis of their endogenous EGFP fluorescence intensity, thereby increasing the fraction of odorant-responsive cells to up to 80% of the total cell number [2].

Biological context of OR3A1

• Sequence analysis further suggests that the two other OR genes present in the cosmid (OR17-40 and OR17-228) may have evolved by ancient tandem duplication of an 11-kb fragment, mediated by recombination between mammalian-wide interspersed repeats [3].

References