Task-dependent Orchestration of Insect Olfactory Sensory Neuron Performance

感官系统必须提供对环境的适当表现。什么是适当的取决于信号对有机体的意义。在拟议的项目中，我们研究了昆虫气味受体的调节。嗅觉感觉神经元表达受体Or56a，它检测到警报气味Geosmin，一种产生毒素的微生物的产物，永久地调节到最高的灵敏度。相比之下，表达食物气味检测Or22a的细胞在休息条件下被设置为中等灵敏度，但可以根据需要进行敏化。这个项目的目的是研究感觉神经元的这些不同特性是如何在不同的水平上实现和表现的，如气味受体的表达密度、下游信号处理和受体神经元内部的放大。这种比较方法将针对在不同水平表达嗅觉感觉神经元的Or22a和Or56a的嗅觉信号链。为此，我们将应用超分辨荧光显微镜和电生理膜片钳技术。

Sensory systems have to provide an appropriate representation of the environment. What is appropriate depends on the meaning of a signal for the organism. In the proposed project we investigate the tuning of insect odorant receptors. Olfactory sensory neurons expressing the receptor Or56a which detects the alarm odor geosmin, a product of toxin producing microbes, are permanently tuned to highest sensitivity. By contrast, cells expressing the food odor-detecting Or22a are set to moderate sensitivity under resting conditions but can be sensitized on demand. The aim of this project is to investigate how these different properties in sensory neuron performance are realized and manifested at various levels, such as odorant receptor expression density, downstream signal processing and amplification within the compartments of the receptor neuron. The comparative approach will target the olfactory signaling chain of Or22a and Or56a expressing olfactory sensory neurons at the various levels. For this sake we will apply super resolution fluorescence microscopy as well as the electrophysiological patch clamp technique.