Genomics of olfactory receptors.

In many species, the sense of smell plays important roles in locating food, detecting predators, navigating, and communicating social information. The olfactory system has evolved complex repertoires of odor receptors (ORs) to fulfill these functions. Through computational data mining, OR repertoires of multiple species were identified, revealing a surprisingly large OR gene family in rodents and evolutionary fluctuation among different organisms. Characteristics of OR genes were explored through computational and experimental methods, showing a complicated gene structure and special genomic distribution. Utilizing high-throughput OR microarrays, expression profiles of the mouse and human OR repertoire were examined, their olfactory functions verified, and their zonal, ectopic and developmental expression determined. Variation in human smelling abilities results from different functional OR repertoires, variable expressional levels and polymorphisms in the copy number of the OR genes. These genomic approaches have both provided new data and generated new questions.