Cloning and expression of odorant receptors

MYRIADS of odorous molecules that vary widely in structure are nevertheless readily detected and discriminated by the sense of smell, but how this is achieved by the olfactory system has been a long-standing puzzle. Several different models have been proposed1, and previous observations indicate that the recognition sites for odorous molecules could be G-protein-coupled receptor proteins2–4, an idea supported by the discovery of a new gene family that probably encodes a diversity of odorant receptors5. Here we report the identification of new members of the gene family encoding putative odorant receptors and demonstrate that they are indeed transcribed in olfactory receptor neurons. Furthermore, the receptor-encoding complementary DNA is expressed in non-neuronal surrogate cells, which generate second messenger responses upon stimulation with appropriate odorants, indicating that the receptors recognize odorants and couple to G proteins of the host cells.