Giant vesicles functionally expressing membrane receptors for an insect pheromone

• DOI: 10.1039/c3cc48216b
• Publication Date: 2014-02-07T13:30:09Z
• Authors: Satoshi Hamada; Masashi Tabuchi; Taro Toyota; Takeshi Sakurai; Tomohiro Hosoi; Tomonori Nomoto; Kei Nakatani; Masanori Fujinami; Ryohei Kanzaki
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 03 medical and health sciences; Green Fluorescent Proteins; Animals; Insect Proteins; Fatty Alcohols; Sex Attractants; Bombyx; Receptors, Odorant; Receptors, Pheromone

To date, biochemical approaches to membrane receptors have been limited to the following methods: knockout or overexpression of membrane receptors by gene introduction and genome engineering or extraction of membrane receptor-surfactant complexes from innate cells and their introduction into model biomembranes. Here, we describe the development of a third method involving gene expression using cell-free in situ protein synthesis inside model biomembrane capsules. We verified this method by synthesizing olfactory receptors from the silkmoth Bombyx mori inside giant vesicles and found that they were excited in the presence of their ligand the Bombyx mori sex pheromone.