Rational engineering approaches for establishing insect olfaction reporters in yeast

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Molecular Biology
• Entomology

Background:

• Insect olfaction is crucial for behavior, influencing pest management and smart farming.
• Traditional methods for studying insect olfactory receptors (ORs) include Drosophila systems and expression in HEK293 cells or Xenopus oocytes.
• Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is a novel and cost-effective chassis for heterologous protein expression.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a scalable yeast-based platform for functional expression of insect olfactory receptors.
• To evaluate the potential of Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a chassis for OR research and deorphanization.
• To optimize experimental parameters for enhanced functionality of insect ORs in yeast.

Main Methods:

• Employed Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a host system for insect OR expression.
• Utilized a genetically encoded calcium sensor for quantitative fluorescence-based evaluation.
• Systematically optimized experimental variables to enhance receptor functionality.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated the feasibility of expressing insect olfactory receptors in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
• Identified key experimental parameters influencing receptor functionality in the yeast system.
• The insect OR co-receptor remained non-functional within the developed yeast-based system.

Conclusions:

• Yeast offers a promising, scalable platform for studying insect olfactory receptors.
• Further research is needed to enable co-receptor function for a complete OR system in yeast.
• This platform holds potential for high-throughput screening and deorphanization of insect ORs.