Taste bud formation depends on taste nerves

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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

Di Fan

Institut de Biologie de l'ENS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Zoubida Chettouh

Institut de Biologie de l'ENS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Giacomo Consalez

San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milano, Italy

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Jean-François Brunet

Institut de Biologie de l'ENS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

For correspondence
jfbrunet@biologie.ens.fr

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1985-6103

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

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.