Yonekura Junichiro, Yokoi Mineto
Molecular Neurogenetics Unit, HMRO, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Yoshida-Konoe, Sakyo, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan.
Mol Cell Neurosci. 2008 Apr;37(4):708-18. doi: 10.1016/j.mcn.2007.12.016. Epub 2007 Dec 15.
Chemical information captured through the vomeronasal sensory neurons is transmitted to mitral cells in the accessory olfactory bulb (AOB). Morphological characterization of AOB mitral cells is crucial to reveal the mechanisms underlying pheromone and other chemical information processing. Here, we developed a conditional genetic approach to visualize single AOB mitral cells in mice and analyzed the distribution of their apical dendritic tufts and cell bodies. We found that there is a subpopulation of superficial AOB mitral cells with small cell bodies and simple dendritic arborization. We also showed that segregation of the anterior and posterior AOB appears incomplete at the level of the mitral cell positions. Furthermore, we demonstrated that significant population of the anterior AOB mitral cells has multiple apical dendritic tufts organized in a quite small range along the dorsal-ventral axis. These findings have important implications in how various chemical signals may be processed in the AOB.
通过犁鼻感觉神经元捕获的化学信息被传递到副嗅球（AOB）中的二尖瓣细胞。对AOB二尖瓣细胞进行形态学表征对于揭示信息素和其他化学信息处理的潜在机制至关重要。在这里，我们开发了一种条件性遗传方法来可视化小鼠中的单个AOB二尖瓣细胞，并分析其顶端树突簇和细胞体的分布。我们发现有一小群浅表AOB二尖瓣细胞，其细胞体小且树突分支简单。我们还表明，在二尖瓣细胞位置水平上，AOB前后部的分离似乎并不完全。此外，我们证明，相当一部分前部AOB二尖瓣细胞具有多个顶端树突簇，这些树突簇沿背腹轴在相当小的范围内排列。这些发现对于各种化学信号如何在AOB中进行处理具有重要意义。
