Hus* Correspondence: emmanuelle.jacquin@versailles.inra.fr 2 INRA, A-967079 UMR-A 1272 INRA-UPMC PISC Physiologie de l’Insecte: Signalisation et Communication, route de Saint-Cyr, 78026 Versailles Cedex, France Full list of author information is available at the end of the articlehighly developed. In particular, the moth pheromone detection system is extremely sensitive: a male can smell and locate a female miles away for mating [1]. It has been for long an established model to study the molecular bases of olfaction [2]. In addition, moths include diverse and important pests of crops, forests and stored products. Olfaction underlies several behaviours critical for crop aggression, including sex pheromone-mediated reproduction, host selection and oviposition [3]. It is?2011 Legeai et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Legeai et al. BMC Genomics 2011, 12:86 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/12/Page 2 ofthus an attractive target for pest control. For example, several olfactory-based strategies have been developed to control moth populations, such as mass trapping and mating disruption [4]. Better knowledge on the molecular mechanisms by which an odour generates a neuronal signal could lead to the identification of targets for the development of new safe control strategies. The olfactory signals are detected by the antennae, the peripheral olfactory organs, where they are transformed in an electrical signal that will be further integrated in the central nervous system. Located on the head, the antennae carry thousands of innervated olfactory structures, the sensilla, which house the olfactory receptor neurons. Within these sensilla, odour recognition relies on the expression of a diversity of olfactory genes involved in different steps PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28575142 (reviewed in [5]). First, volatile odours are bound by odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) in order to cross the aqueous sensillum lymph that embeds the olfactory neuron dendrites. PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27577235 The OBP family notably includes two sub-families: the pheromone-binding proteins (PBPs), thought to transport pheromone molecules, and the general odorant-binding proteins (GOBPs), thought to transport general odorants such as plant volatiles [6,7]. Many other soluble secreted proteins are also found in abundance within the sensillum lymph, examples are the so-called chemosensory proteins (CSPs), the antennal binding proteins X (ABPX) and the sensory appendage proteins (SAPs) [8], but their role in olfaction remains elusive. After crossing the lymph, odorant molecules interact with olfactory receptors (ORs, called pheromone receptors or PRs when ligands are pheromones) located in the dendritic membrane of receptor neurons (reviewed in [9]). The chemical signal is then transformed into an electric signal that will be transmitted to the brain. Sensory neuron membrane proteins (SNMPs), located in the dendritic membrane of pheromone sensitive neurons [7,10], are thought to trigger ligand delivery to the receptor [11]. Signal termination may then be ensured by specific enzymes, the odorant-degrading enzymes (ODEs, called pheromone-degrading enzymes or PDEs when substrates consist of pheromones) (reviewed in [7]). Although we still lack a consensus on the exact function of each pr.
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