Taste bud formation depends on taste nerves
- Ecole Normale Supérieure, France
- San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Italy
Abstract
It has been known for more than a century that, in adult vertebrates, the maintenance of taste buds depends on their afferent nerves. However, the initial formation of taste buds is proposed to be nerve-independent in amphibians, and evidence to the contrary in mammals has been endlessly debated, mostly due to indirect and incomplete means to impede innervation during the protracted perinatal period of taste bud differentiation. Here, by genetically ablating, in mice, all somatic (i.e. touch) or visceral (i.e. taste) neurons for the oral cavity, we show that the latter but not the former are absolutely required for the proper formation of their target organs, the taste buds.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript, and in the source data files.
Article and author information
Author details
Jean-François Brunet
Funding
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-12-BSV4-0007-01)
- Jean-François Brunet
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-10-LABX-54 MEMOLIFE)
- Jean-François Brunet
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02 PSL research University)
- Jean-François Brunet
Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (DEQ 2000326472)
- Jean-François Brunet
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-17-CE16-00006-01)
- Jean-François Brunet
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All animal studies were done in accordance with the guidelines issued by the French Ministry of Agriculture and have been approved by the Direction Départementale des Services Vétérinaires de Paris.
Copyright
© 2019, Fan et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Taste bud formation depends on taste nerves
eLife 8:e49226.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49226
