Construction of a Biohybrid Odorant Sensor using Biological Olfactory Receptors Embedded into Bilayer Lipid Membrane on a Chip

This paper describes an odorant sensor based on mosquito olfactory receptors (ORs) sensitive to the volatile organic compound octenol. The ORs and OR co-receptors were reconstructed in the lipid bilayer membrane in a chamber device equipped with electrodes. Using this odorant sensor, we obtained ion current changes caused by specific OR responses to octenol. We installed the odorant sensor into a mobile robot and succeeded in the demonstration of coupling octenol gas detection and robot actuation. We believe that this biohybrid odorant sensing system will be a key technology for future artificial olfaction.