Microfluidic Odorant Sensor with Frog Eggs Expressing Olfactory Receptors

This study describes a membrane-protein based odorant sensor device consisting of microfluidic channels and frog eggs (Xenopus laevis oocyte) expressing olfactory receptors. These receptors are from silkmoth's receptors, BmOR1 and BmOR3 excited by specific pheromones, bombykol and bombykal, respectively. We employ a conventional two electrode voltage clamp method for the signal measurement of the oocytes in our microfluidic system. We have succeeded in selectively detecting these two types of odorant-like chemicals and the two current traces can be recorded by parallel measurement in this system. It implies that our suggested devices can be applied to multichannel detection as a chemical sensor using biological reactions.