Identification of sensory receptors in murine liver

Sensory receptors, including olfactory receptors, taste receptors, and opsins have recently been found in a variety of non-sensory tissues where they have distinct physiological functions. As G protein-coupled receptors, these proteins can serve as important chemosensors by sensing and interpreting chemical cues in the environment. We reasoned that the liver, the largest metabolic organ in the body, is primed to take advantage of some of these sensory receptors in order to sense and regulate blood content and metabolism. In this study, we designed a custom TaqMan array to screen for all bitter, sweet, and umani taste receptors, the non-visual optins, and 44 olfactory receptors in the murine liver. 2 male livers (M3 and HF1) were used to screen for the sensory receptors. These livers were obtained from 2 age-matched C57BL6 mice. 18s RNA served as the endogenous control and was used for normalization while Gapdh was used as another housekeeping gene.