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.
Metrics
-
- 2,593
- views
-
- 307
- downloads
-
- 26
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Semiochemical responsive olfactory sensory neurons are sexually dimorphic and plastic
eLife 9:e54501.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.54501
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
Human-specific cognitive abilities depend on information processing in the cerebral cortex, where the neurons are significantly larger and their processes longer and sparser compared to rodents. We found that, in synaptically connected layer 2/3 pyramidal cells (L2/3 PCs), the delay in signal propagation from soma to soma is similar in humans and rodents. To compensate for the longer processes of neurons, membrane potential changes in human axons and/or dendrites must propagate faster. Axonal and dendritic recordings show that the propagation speed of action potentials (APs) is similar in human and rat axons, but the forward propagation of excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) and the backward propagation of APs are 26 and 47% faster in human dendrites, respectively. Experimentally-based detailed biophysical models have shown that the key factor responsible for the accelerated EPSP propagation in human cortical dendrites is the large conductance load imposed at the soma by the large basal dendritic tree. Additionally, larger dendritic diameters and differences in cable and ion channel properties in humans contribute to enhanced signal propagation. Our integrative experimental and modeling study provides new insights into the scaling rules that help maintain information processing speed albeit the large and sparse neurons in the human cortex.
-
- Neuroscience
When navigating environments with changing rules, human brain circuits flexibly adapt how and where we retain information to help us achieve our immediate goals.
