{"doi":"10.1101/2025.05.30.657074","title":"A covalent recognition strategy enables conspecific mate identification","abstract":"ABSTRACT The olfactory system can detect an uncountable number of volatile molecules while retaining the ability to discriminate amongst very similar ones. We identified a unique mechanism employed by insect odorant receptors to discriminate amongst pheromones, chemical communication signals that orchestrate courtship and mating behavior. By coupling cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and functional mutagenesis, we find that males of the silkmoth Bombyx mori distinguish between two quasi-identical compounds –bombykol, an alcohol, and bombykal, an aldehyde– by establishing a reversible covalent bond between the pheromone receptor and bombykal. Bombykol, instead, binds to the same receptor through hydrogen bonds, with significantly lower potency. The unique ability of aldehydes to establish a reversible covalent bond allows moths to unequivocally distinguish between compounds that differ only in the presence of a single hydrogen atom. Further, as many important odorants are aldehydes, this work illuminates a new binding mode available to the olfactory system to achieve high selectivity for these compounds.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2025,"id":558155,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9605,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1459045,"name":"Sanjana Mandala","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":6635,"name":"Hanjie Jiang","orcid":"0000-0001-6090-4552","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":670994,"name":"Xiao Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-0094-6221","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":734580,"name":"Phillip Cole","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228038,"name":"Josefina del Mármol","orcid":"0000-0003-2715-0482","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":925996,"name":"Sukjin Jang","orcid":"0000-0002-4360-0722","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":50,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:55:25.969263Z","pmid":"40501684","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}