Functional variation and evolution of human odorant Center for Developmental Biology

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Category	Seminar
Date and Time	2007-11-22 16:00 - 17:00
Venue	Auditorium C1F
Speaker	Hiroaki Matsunami
Affiliation	Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University Medical Center
Title	Functional variation and evolution of human odorant
Poster	click here to download(PDF)
Host	Masatoshi Takeichi
Summary	Human olfactory perception differs enormously between individuals, with large perceptual ariations in the intensity and pleasantness of a given odor. For instance, androstenone, an odorous steroid derived from testosterone, is variously perceived by different individuals as offensive ('sweaty, urinous'), pleasant ('sweet, floral'), or odorless. Similar variation in odor perception has been observed for a number of other odors. We investigated whether genetic variation in human odorant receptor genes accounts for interindividual variation in odor perception. We found that a human odorant receptor, OR7D4, is selectively activated in vitro by androstenone. We show that genotypic variation in OR7D4 accounts for a significant proportion of the pleasantness and intensity variance in perception of androstenone. We are currently investigating what evolutionary pressure have shaped functional variation of OR7D4 in humans and other primate species.