Using GEFs to deorphanize odorant receptors

Odorant perception is initiated when odorants activate uniquecombinations of odorant receptors (ORs) expressed in the ciliaof olfactory sensory neurons in the nose (Buck and Axel 1991;Malnic et al. 1999). One of the greatest challenges in the olfactoryscience is to correlate ORs with their ligands (to deorphanizethe ORs). The determination of OR–ligand pairs shouldreveal how the OR family is used to generate diverse odorantperceptions (Keller et al. 2007, Menashi et al. 2007). However,these studies are complicated