The Peripheral Representation of Odor Space

总结（项目1：气味空间的外围表征） 对嗅觉编码理解的进展一直受到长期存在的障碍的阻碍， 刺激的性质和潜在的感觉生物学的复杂性。与此同时， 哺乳动物嗅觉编码的研究将提供一个独特的窗口，了解多维刺激是如何 以哺乳动物的大脑为代表。嗅觉系统使用大家族的气味受体来检测大量的 化学刺激的数量。为了更好地理解嗅觉，必须克服的一个重要挑战是 建立一个系统所代表的嗅觉刺激特征的综合描述。做 因此，我们需要克服以前在确定刺激措施方面无法克服的技术挑战 大量受体对大量气味的特异性，我们产生了一个理论上的 量化和探索气味和受体的多维“空间”的框架。在这里，我们建议 一个跨学科的努力，以全面表征气味的反应特性，大量的 气味受体在体内，并使用这些信息明确和严格的测试气味编码的新模型。 这个项目利用嗅觉中气味受体和肾小球之间的一一对应关系 小鼠的鳞茎。目的1将描述大量受体（肾小球）在清醒、完整的 使用功能成像的动物。目的2将绘制这些肾小球反应的具体受体， 新兴的空间转录组学方法。Aim 3将使用一种强大的基于基因组学的检测方法来识别 最高亲和力的受体为一大套个人的气味。Aim 4将测试一个新的理论框架， 了解气味特征是如何表现的。这种大规模的体内多学科方法将提供 长期寻求的数据和分析工具，以严格探索气味编码的潜在模型。

Summary (Project 1: The peripheral representation of odor space) Progress towards an understanding of olfactory coding has been hampered by long-standing hurdles created by the nature of the stimulus and the complexity of the underlying sensory biology. At the same time, a description of olfactory coding in mammals would provide a unique window into how multidimensional stimuli are represented by the mammalian brain. Olfactory systems use large families of odorant receptors to detect a vast number of chemical stimuli. An important challenge that must be overcome to better understand olfaction is to establish a comprehensive description of what features of olfactory stimuli are represented by the system. Doing so requires that we overcome previously insurmountable technical challenges in identifying the stimulus specificity of a large number of receptors to a large number of odorants, and that we generate a theoretical framework for quantifying and exploring the multidimensional “space” of odors and receptors. Here, we propose an interdisciplinary effort to comprehensively characterize the odorant response properties of a large number of odorant receptors in vivo, and to use this information to explicitly and rigorously test novel models of odor coding. This project exploits the one-to-one correspondence between odorant receptors and glomeruli in the olfactory bulb of mice. Aim 1 will characterize the sensitivities of a large number of receptors (glomeruli) in awake, intact animals using functional imaging. Aim 2 will map these glomerular responses to specific receptors using emerging spatial transcriptomics methods. Aim 3 will use a powerful genomics-based assay to identify the highest affinity receptors for a large set of individual odors. Aim 4 will test a novel theoretical framework for understanding how odor features are represented. This large-scale in vivo multidisciplinary approach will provide long-sought data and analytical tools to rigorously explore potential models of odor coding.