Chemical sensing of DNT by engineered olfactory yeast strain.

Venkat Radhika, Tassula Proikas-Cezanne, Muralidharan Jayaraman, Djamila Onesime, Ji Hee Ha, Danny N Dhanasekaran

Fels Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Biology, Temple University School of Medicine, 3307 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19140, USA.

Nature chemical biology 2007 Jun

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With the increasing threat of environmental toxicants including biological and chemical warfare agents, fabricating innovative biomimetic systems to detect these harmful agents is critically important. With the broad objective of developing such a biosensor, here we report the construction of a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain containing the primary components of the mammalian olfactory signaling pathway. In this engineered yeast strain, WIF-1alpha, olfactory receptor signaling is coupled to green fluorescent protein expression. Using this 'olfactory yeast', we screened for olfactory receptors that could report the presence of the odorant 2,4-dinitrotoluene, an explosive residue mimic. With this approach, we have identified the novel rat olfactory receptor Olfr226, which is closely related to the mouse olfactory receptors Olfr2 and MOR226-1, as a 2,4-dinitrotoluene-responsive receptor.

Citation

Venkat Radhika, Tassula Proikas-Cezanne, Muralidharan Jayaraman, Djamila Onesime, Ji Hee Ha, Danny N Dhanasekaran. Chemical sensing of DNT by engineered olfactory yeast strain. Nature chemical biology. 2007 Jun;3(6):325-30