Ectopic odorant receptors responding to flavor compounds in skin health and disease: Current insights and future perspectives

Abstract

Skin, the largest organ of human body, acts as a barrier to protect body from the external environment and is exposed to a myriad of flavor compounds, especially food- and plant essential oil-derived odorant compounds. Skin cells are known to express various chemosensory receptors, such as transient potential receptors, adenosine triphosphate receptors, taste receptors, and odorant receptors (ORs). We aim to provide a review of this rapidly developing field and discuss latest discoveries related to the skin ORs activated by flavor compounds, their impacts on skin health and disease, odorant ligands interacting with ORs exerting specific biological effects, and the mechanisms involved. ORs are recently found to be expressed in skin tissue and cells, such as keratinocytes, melanocytes, and fibroblasts. To date, several ectopic skin ORs responding to flavor compounds, are involved in different skin biological processes, such as wound healing, hair growth, melanin regulation, pressure stress, skin barrier function, atopic dermatitis, and psoriasis. The recognition of physiological role of skin ORs, combined with the fact that ORs belong to a highly druggable protein family (G protein-coupled receptors), underscores the potential of skin ORs responding to flavor compounds as a novel regulating strategy for skin health and disease.

Keywords:

• Odorant receptor
• flavor compounds
• ectopic function
• skin
• chemosensory receptor

Authors’ contributions

R.G. and T.T. wrote the manuscript; R.G., Y.W., J.F., Y.Z., M.L., S.-G.K., K.H. and T.T. reviewed the manuscript; all authors approved the final manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2021QC118), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (7222249), and the 2115 Talent Development Program of China Agricultural University.