- 1Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Lebensmittelchemie, Leibniz Institut, Lise-Meitner Street 34, D-85354 Freising, Germany.
- 2Deutsche
Forschungsanstalt für Lebensmittelchemie, Leibniz Institut,
Lise-Meitner Street 34, D-85354 Freising, Germany
dietmar.krautwurst@lrz.tum.de.
Abstract
Key
food odorants are the most relevant determinants by which we detect,
recognize, and hedonically evaluate the aroma of foods and beverages.
Odorants are detected by our chemical sense of olfaction, comprising a
set of approximately 400 different odorant receptor types. However, the
specific receptor activity patterns representing the aroma percepts of
foods or beverages, as well as the key food odorant agonist profiles of
single-odorant receptors, are largely unknown. We aimed to establish
comprehensive key food odorant agonist profiles of 2 unrelated, broadly
tuned receptors, OR1A1 and OR2W1, that had been associated thus far with
mostly non-key food odorants and shared some of these agonists. By
screening both receptors against 190 key food odorants in a cell-based
luminescence assay, we identified 14 and 18 new key food odorant
agonists for OR1A1 and OR2W1, respectively, with
3-methyl-2,4-nonanedione emerging as the most potent agonist for OR1A1
by 3 orders of magnitude, with a submicromolar half maximal effective
concentration. 3-Methyl-2,4-nonanedione has been associated with a prune
note in oxidized wine and is an aroma determinant in tea and apricots.
Further screening against the entire set of 391 human odorant receptors
revealed that 30 or 300 μmol/L 3-methyl-2,4-nonanedione activated only 1
receptor, OR1A1, suggesting a unique role of OR1A1 for the most
sensitive detection of this key food odorant in wine, tea, and other
food matrices.
© The Author 2016.
Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For
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KEYWORDS:
chemosensory; key food odorants; luminescence; olfaction; receptors; screening
