Functional reconstitution of the insect odorant receptor co-receptor in a tethered lipid bilayer membrane

As membrane proteins are among the most important drug targets, it is critical to study membrane proteins to improve drug design. However, due to the myriad roles fulfilled by the cellular membrane, it is a highly complex environment and challenging to study. Tethered membranes reproduce the basic physicochemical properties of the cellular membrane without their inherent complexity, and their high electrical resistance and stability makes them ideal to study membrane proteins, particularly ion channels. However, due to the close proximity of the membrane to the support and the reduced fluidity and high packing density, they are unsuitable to study larger membrane proteins. We present here a tethered membrane system into which the functional the odorant receptor coreceptor from Drosophila melanogaster, a tetrameric ionotropic receptor was incorporated and its sensitivity to various ligands was examined via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy.