SEX BASED DIFFERENCES IN OLFACTORY SENSITIVITY

心理医学研究经常发现性别差异 感官能力。在大多数情况下，这些问题的机械基础 人们对不同之处知之甚少。这一点在以下情况下尤为明显 其中之一就是人类的嗅觉能力。据报道，女性比 对气味敏感，并具有更好的气味识别能力 但其生理基础尚不清楚。缺乏一种 合适的动物模型阻碍了生理和解剖学 对潜在机制的调查。在描述这些特征的同时 斑马鱼的嗅觉能力我们发现 雌性对所有一般进食和社会气味的测试都较大 这就是相应的雄性反应。了解 这些性别差异在一般心理因素中的机制基础 敏感度(相对于信息素敏感度)是 当前应用程序。有三个基本问题指导着我们的调查。 1)在敏感度方面观察到的基于性别的显著差异 对少数气味的反应可概括为大多数气味，包括 推定的信息素？2)生殖状态会有什么影响 在决定嗅觉敏感度方面起作用？3)生理和/或 两性嗅觉器官的解剖差异是 敏感度的不同？当代电生理学和 将使用钙离子成像技术来确定基本的 单个嗅觉感受器神经元的生物物理特性是 受性爱的影响。一种活性依赖的免疫染色方法 标准的形态测量技术将被用来估计 气味敏感型天牛的密度。斑马鱼是一种 很少有完整的模型，其中完整的分子图像 胚胎发育，包括嗅觉系统的发育 很可能会出现。因此，试验者打算解决 关于嗅觉性别差异的基本问题 加工过程还将提供必要的生理背景以帮助 在解释发育和分子遗传数据时， 是在这个实验室和其他实验室获得的。

Psychophisical studies frequently identify sex-based differences in sensory capability. In most cases the mechanistic basis of these differences is poorly understood. This is particularly evident when one considers human olfactory capability. Women are reportedly more sensitive to odors and and to have better odor identification abilities than men but the physiological basis is unknown. The lack of an appropriate animal model has hampered physiological and anatomical investigations of the underlying mechanisms. While characterizing the olfactory capabilities of zebrafish we discovered that the response of females to all general feeding and social odorants tested was larger thatn the corresponding male response. Understanding the mechanistic basis of these sex-based differences in general olfactor sensitivity (as opposed to pheromone sensitivity) is the focus of current application. Three basic questions direct our investigation. 1) Do the significant sex-based differencesin sensitivity observed in response to a few odorants generalize to most odorants including putative pheromones? 2) What influence does reproductive status play in determining olfactory sensitivity? 3) Can physiological and/or anatomical differences in the olfactory organs of the sexes account for the differences in sensitivity? Contemporary electrophysiological and Ca 2+ imaging techniques will be used to determine if basic biophysical properties of individual olfactory receptor neurons are influenced by sex. An activity dependent immunostaining procedure and standard morphometric techniques will be used to estimate the density of competent odor-sensitive ORNs. The zebrafish is oneof a very few vertegrate models where a complete molecular picture of embryonic development including development of the olfactory system is likely to emerge. Consequently, experimenets intended to address fundamental questions about sex-based differences in olfactory processing will also provide an essential physiological context to aid in interpretationof developmental and molecular genetic data that are being obtained in this lab and others.