Characterization of Olfactory Receptor Variants in Pakistani Population

Abstract

It has been reported that two olfactory receptor (OR) genes i.e. OR51B2 and OR51E2 are significantly enriched in variants in the Pakistani population. However, the inference of these variants on the OR-ligand interactions requires clarification. The current study was carried out to understand the olfactory receptor-ligands interactions in Pakistani individuals by application of bioinformatics tools and a 1000 genome database. The VCF files for these genes of Pakistani individuals were retrieved from the 1000 genome project. Homology models for human olfactory receptors were constructed by phyre2 program and by identifying the binding pockets for these receptors using the BIOVIA Discovery Studio program. Medium to long-range simulation studies of odor ligands in the receptor binding pocket using a Glaxy7TM were performed. Finally, non-covalent interactions of ligands with receptors were assessed by BIOVIA Discovery Studio. We retrieved Vcf data of two individual genes OR51E2 and OR51B2 for variant detections using BCF/VCFtools. BLAST was used to identify closely related structures of proteins encoded by OR51E2 and OR51B2 genes. The current study efficiently clarified changes in OR-ligand interactions due to OR gene variants in the Pakistani population.