Semiochemical responsive olfactory sensory neurons are sexually dimorphic and plastic
- Duke University, United States
- University at Albany, State University of New York, United States
- Indiana University Bloomington, United States
Abstract
Understanding how genes and experiences work in concert to generate phenotypic variability will provide a better understanding of individuality. Here, we considered this in the main olfactory epithelium, a chemosensory structure with over a thousand distinct cell types in mice. We identified a subpopulation of olfactory sensory neurons, defined by receptor expression, whose abundances were sexually dimorphic. This subpopulation of olfactory sensory neurons was over-represented in sex-separated mice and robustly responsive to sex-specific semiochemicals. Sex-combined housing led to an attenuation of the dimorphic representations. Single-cell sequencing analysis revealed an axis of activity-dependent gene expression amongst a subset of the dimorphic OSN populations. Finally, the pro-apoptotic gene Bax is necessary to generate the dimorphic representations. Altogether, our results suggest a role of experience and activity in influencing homeostatic mechanisms to generate a robust sexually dimorphic phenotype in the main olfactory epithelium.
Data availability
Sequencing data have been deposited in GEO under accession codes GSE160272.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (DC014423)
- Eric Block
- Hiroaki Matsunami
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (DC016224)
- Hiroaki Matsunami
National Science Foundation (1556207)
- Hiroaki Matsunami
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocol A128-19-06 at Duke University.
Copyright
© 2020, Vihani 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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Semiochemical responsive olfactory sensory neurons are sexually dimorphic and plastic
eLife 9:e54501.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.54501
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