New insights on the adsorption of floral odorants on Apis cerana cerana olfactory receptor AcerOr1: Theoretical modeling and thermodynamic study

Apis cerana cerana counted on its sensitive olfactory system to make survival activities in the surrounding environment and the olfactory receptors can be considered as a primary requirement of odorant detection, recognition and coding. Indeed, the exploitation of the olfactory system of insects in particular the Asian honeybee “Apis cerana cerana” can be the best experimental model to investigate the essentials of the chemosensitivity and may help to better understand the olfactory perception in insects. Hence, an advanced statistical physics modeling via the monolayer model with single energy (n ≠ 1) of the three dose-olfactory responses curves indicated that undecanoic acid, 1-octyl alcohol and 1-nonanol were docked with a mixed parallel and non-parallel orientation on AcerOr1. Furthermore, in the present work, the Apis cerana cerana olfactory receptor AcerOr1 showed high sensitivity and discrimination power to detect undecanoic acid, 1-octyl alcohol and 1-nonanol with concentrations at half saturations values of 10−7 mol/L and the molar adsorption energy values obtained from data fitting results, which were ranged from 17.91 to 24.00 kJ/mol, confirmed the exothermic and the physisorption nature of the adsorption of the studied floral odorants on AcerOr1. The studied experimental dose-response curves of undecanoic acid, 1-octyl alcohol and 1-nonanol provided access to quantitative (i.e., stereographic and energetic) characterizations of AcerOr1 via the determination of the olfactory receptor site size distributions (RSDs) and the adsorption energy distributions (AEDs). The stereographic characterization showed RSDs spread out from 0.20 to 8 nm presenting average values corresponding to the maximum of the peaks at 1.50 nm, at 1.10 nm and at 1.04 nm for undecanoic acid, 1-octyl alcohol and 1-nonanol, respectively. The energetic characterization presented AEDs ranged from 0 to 40 kJ/mol showing an approximate adsorption energy bands defined between 7.50 and 27.50 kJ/mol, between 15 and 33 kJ/mol and between 13.50 and 34.50 kJ/mol for undecanoic acid, 1-octyl alcohol and 1-nonanol, respectively. The utilization of the analytical expression of the olfactory threshold allowed giving important and helpful informations about the occupation rate of AcerOr1 binding sites that fired a minimal olfactory response at a honeybee olfactory receptor. Hence, the olfactory response can be detected only when 1.97 %, 1.13 % and 2.00 % of AcerOr1 binding sites were occupied by undecanoic acid, 1-octyl alcohol and 1-nonanol, respectively. Lastly, by means of the selected model, the thermodynamic potentials, such as the adsorption entropy, the Gibbs free enthalpy and the internal energy could be calculated and interpreted.