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Updated: Apr 12, 2026

High-throughput Analysis of Mammalian Olfactory Receptors: Measurement of Receptor Activation via Luciferase Activity
Published on: June 2, 2014
Human olfactory receptor responses to odorants
Joel D Mainland1, Yun R Li2, Ting Zhou2
1Monell Chemical Senses Center , 3500 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA ; Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University Medical Center , Research Drive, Durham, North Carolina 27710, USA ; Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine , Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
Abstract:
Although the human olfactory system is capable of discriminating a vast number of odors, we do not currently understand what chemical features are encoded by olfactory receptors. In large part this is due to a paucity of data in a search space covering the interactions of hundreds of receptors with billions of odorous molecules. Of the approximately 400 intact human odorant receptors, only 10% have a published ligand. Here we used a heterologous luciferase assay to screen 73 odorants against a clone library of 511 human olfactory receptors. This dataset will allow other researchers to interrogate the combinatorial nature of olfactory coding.
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