Summary/Abstract
Odorant binding proteins, OBPs, are a diverse family of small, globular, extra-cellular proteins which assist in solubilizing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) so they can be internalized and transported by an organism. Since their initial discovery in early eighties 1, thousands of OBPs have been identified through genome sequencing and characterized by fluorescence ligand binding assays 2. While a given individual OBP has been studied in the context of their role in specific organism, there has not been studies towards the understanding of the comparative structure-function relations of all known OBPs, primarily due to a lack of a centralized database that incorporates the binding affinity with the structure of all OBPs. Incorporating OBP information into a database requires not only an extensive search of all existing resources, but also creating a useful platform that relates sequence structures to target functions. Using data obtained from 215 functional studies containing 381 unique OBPs from 91 insect species we created a database, dubbed as iOBPdb, that contains OBP binding affinities for a wide range of VOC targets. We demonstrate here that the construction of this initial database provides powerful search and associative capabilities including interrogating odor binding proteins as clusters and groups by sequence similarity versus protein and target molecular weights, and by the functional groups of the VOC targets. The comparative interrogation of the probe-target recognition allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the underlying structural features of all OBPs that had not been possible by only examining the OBPs individually. We present our results in a variety of phylogenetic representations as well as providing the binding profiles of OBP groups to VOC functional group moieties. iOBPdb will have an enormous range potential applications spanning from eNOSE bionanosensors, development of novel bioassays and drug development, discovery of novel pesticides which inhibit VOC / OBP interactions, as well providing a foundational basis for the functional understanding of the logic of odor sensing and perception in the brain.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.