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Review

How Smell Regulates Metabolism: The Role Of Ectopically Expressed Olfactory Receptors In Lipid and Glucose Homeostasis

Submitted:

31 March 2022

Posted:

02 April 2022

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Abstract
Olfactory Receptors (ORs) are a large family of G protein coupled receptors predominantly expressed by the main olfactory epithelium at nasal level and are responsible for the generation of smelling sense. Microarray and deep sequencing analyses, however, have demonstrated that ORs are ectopically expressed in various human tissues including testis, kidneys, adipose tissue and liver and their biological functions become to be unrevealed. Molecular and pharmacological approaches have shown that some of these ORs modulate glucose and lipid metabolism at multiple interfaces, suggesting that ORs might be part of the large family of nutrient sensors. i.e. molecular/ cellular machines that respond to a specific nutrient component. By using nutrients- derived agonists it has been shown that ORs effectively modulates glucose and lipid metabolism raising interest on their possible therapeutic application in the treatment of metabolic disorders including dyslipidemia, obesity and metabolic syndrome.
Keywords: 
olfactory receptors; glucose metabolism; type 2 diabetes mellitus; lipid metabolism; NAFLD; metabolic syndrome
Subject: 
Medicine and Pharmacology  -   Gastroenterology and Hepatology
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.

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