Genetic Analysis of Olfactory Coding in Drosophilia

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The olfactory system permits animals to perceive a vast number of critical environmental stimuli signaling the presence of food, predators, or mates. Recent advances in the molecular biology of olfaction in diverse species have uncovered these unifying principles: a given olfactory neuron expresses one or a few specific odorant receptor genes; all neurons expressing one odorant receptor converge upon a limited number of targets called glomeruli in the brain; odor stimuli elicit stereotyped patterns of glomerular activation in the brain. However, how the conscious perception of an odor is encoded in the brain is unclear. The long term goals of this proposal are to understand the molecular and cellular basis for odor coding. Experiments will be carried out in the larval stage of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, which has an anatomically simple olfactory system amenable to behavior genetic analysis. Preliminary studies have demonstrated that 21 neurons in the dorsal organ at the tip of the larva mediate all olfactory responses to volatile stimuli; that a previously uncharacterized subset of at least 18 Drosophila odorant receptor genes encodes the larval odorant receptors; that a given olfactory neuron expresses one or a few of these odorant receptor genes and targets a dedicated glomerulus in the larval brain; that genetic ablation of a single olfactory neuron leads to selective alterations in olfactory behavior. These results establish the Drosophila larva as the simplest known genetically manipulable model organism that contains all the critical cellular elements found in vertebrate olfactory systems, and set the stage for analyzing odor coding at the level of genes, neurons, circuits, and behavior. These studies have led to the hypothesis that combinatorial activation of olfactory neurons expressing different odorant receptors is required to encode the salient features of a given odorant and activate the appropriate behavioral output. To test this hypothesis, the following specific aims are proposed: (1) Isolating the complete repertoire of larval odorant receptor genes. (2) Determining the peripheral and central organization of larval olfactory neurons. (3) Elucidating the behavioral output of identified larval olfactory neurons. The health relatedness of these studies is that an understanding of circuits underlying sensory perception is relevant for brain disorders with a neurological or psychiatric basis.