Investigation of olfactory perception by a putative adsorption process of sotolone and abhexone on human olfactory receptor OR8D1: Statistical physics modeling and molecular docking

Abstract

In the present paper, a double layer advanced model was used to investigate the adsorption process putatively involved in the olfactory perception of sotolone and abhexone molecules on the human olfactory receptor OR8D1. The number of adsorbed molecules or the fraction of adsorbed molecule per site, n, informed that the two odorants molecules are docked on OR8D1 binding sites with mixed parallel and nonparallel anchorages. Furthermore, the estimated molar adsorption energy (−ΔE1 and −ΔE2) were inferior to 40 kJ/mol for the two adsorption systems, which confirmed the physical nature and the exothermic character of the adsorption process. In addition, stereographic characterizations of the receptor sites surface were carried out through the determination of the receptor site size distribution (RSDs) via Kelvin equation, which spread out from 0.05 to 1.5 nm. The adsorption energy distributions (AEDs) via Polayni equation show an adsorption band spectrum localized between 17 kJ/mol and 22.5 kJ/mol for sotolone and abhexone molecules respectively. A molecular docking calculation was performed. The results indicate that the binding affinities are belonging to the spectrum of the energy band of the molecules sotolone and abhexone, with values 19.66 kJ/mol and 19.24 kJ/mol.