Converting Signalling Pathway of Olfactory Receptor Proteins Into Electronic Read Out

Abstract

Integration of modern nanoelectronic technology with the potent molecular machines of living organisms offers a pathway to advanced chemical sensing and high throughput screening of ligand binding. Integration of amphiphilic membrane proteins remains a challenging problem despite their vital and varied functionality in living organisms. We have created a nanoelectronic interface to G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), a large family of membrane proteins whose roles in the detection of molecules outside eukaryotic cells and initiation of cascades of intracellular responses make them important pharmaceutical targets. Olfactory receptor proteins (ORs) are the most numerous class of GPCRs, representing transcription products of ∼ 3% of the mammalian genome. We report a method to integrate ORs with carbon nanotube (NT) transistors. The resulting devices transduce signals associated with odorant binding to ORs in the gas phase under ambient conditions and show responses that are in excellent agreement with results from established assays for OR-ligand binding. The work represents significant progress towards an electronic nose that can be directly compared to biological olfactory systems as well as a general method for the study of GPCR function in multiple domains using electronic readout.View Large Image | View Hi-Res Image | Download PowerPoint Slide