RECEPTOR MECHANISMS IN OLFACTION

气味是通过调节体内离子通道的过程传递的 嗅觉感受器神经元膜。这项研究旨在 确定并描述这些过程的长期目标 学习嗅觉系统如何检测、辨别和编码 气味信息。这项研究将在黑斑潜蝇身上进行， 一种新生的火蜥蜴，一直是 生理检查。它巨大的细胞和水生栖息地使 它特别适合于研究气味转导。虽然具体 气味转导的特征可能并不是所有动物都有的， 可以从Nexturus学到的原理和基本特征可以 要具有普遍性。膜片钳电生理方法，闪光光解 笼状化合物、钙成像和分子生物学技术 将用来解决关于气味的几个长期存在的问题 转导。这些包括氯离子通道的特征。 这似乎是由细胞内环状AMP和环状 GMP。在我们的研究中首次发现的这种电导具有一种新颖的 对环核苷酸的依赖，表明它可能与气味有关 转导。另一项单独的研究将检查气味传导途径。 这是由氨基酸刺激的，涉及到 嗅觉感受器神经元的细胞内钙离子。第三部分 这项研究的重点是嗅觉受体基因家族。在预赛中 研究中，我们从蜜腺中克隆了6个嗅觉受体基因。 令人惊讶的是，鉴于这种动物的水生栖息地，六只中的五只 基因看起来像哺乳动物，但只有一个像鱼。vbl.使用 分子方法，这些和嗅觉受体的附加成员 将研究基因家族-了解它们在嗅觉中的功能 感受器神经元。

Odors are transduced by processes that modulate ion channels in the membranes of olfactory receptor neurons. This study is aimed at identifying and characterizing these processes with the long-range goal of learning how the olfactory system detects, discriminates, and encodes odor information. The studies will be conducted with Necturus maculosus, a neotenic salamander that has been a valuable animal model for physiological investigations. Its large cells and aquatic habitat make it especially well suited for studying odor transduction. While specific features of odor transduction may not be shared by all animals, the principles and essential features that can be learned from Necturus may be universal. Patch-clamp electrophysiological methods, flash photolysis of caged compounds, calcium imaging, and molecular biological techniques will be used to address several long-standing questions about odor transduction. These include the characterization of a chloride channel that appears to be directly gated by intracellular cyclic AMP and cyclic GMP. This conductance, first detected in our studies, has a novel dependence on cyclic nucleotides that suggests it may be involved in odor transduction. A separate study will examine an odor transduction pathway that is stimulated by amino acids and involves the elevation of intracellular calcium in olfactory receptor neurons. The third part of the study focusses on the olfactory receptor gene family. In preliminary studies, we have cloned six olfactory receptor genes from Necturus.. Surprisingly in light of this animal's aquatic habitat, five of the six genes appear to be mammal-like while only one is fish-like. Using molecular methods, these and additional members of the olfactory receptor gene family will be studied-to learn about their functions in olfactory receptor neurons.