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Implications for human odor sensing revealed from the statistics of odorant-receptor interactions
Fig 3
Distribution of effective odorant concentration for the activation of partner receptors.
a. Histogram of EC50 calculated for all dose-response data (gray). Among the 535 interacting odorant-receptor pairs, 475 pairs exhibit activation (δSmax > 0, red), and the remaining pairs show deactivation (δSmax < 0, cyan). Note that the red and cyan distributions sum to make the gray (all pairs) distribution. The EC50 values for the pairs exhibiting activation can be fitted effectively to a Gaussian 
[42] with μc = −3.6 and σc = 1.1; for all pairs, μc = −4.0 and σc = 1.8. The skewness of the distribution is likely to be contributed from the extremal (cutoff-based) nature of the measurement, which unavoidably eliminates the weakly interacting (high EC50) pairs from the data. The deactivating pairs are characterized with a broader distribution of EC50 values. The super-strong binders (EC50 < −9) are exclusively contributed by those among the odorant-receptor pairs demonstrating the deactivation. b. Odorant-specific differential response for the top five broadly-interacting odorants.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006175.g003