Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California 92697-4550, USA.
J Comp Neurol. 2010 May 1;518(9):1542-55. doi: 10.1002/cne.22289.
To determine how responses evoked by natural odorant mixtures compare to responses evoked by individual odorant chemicals, we mapped 2-deoxyglucose uptake during exposures to vapors arising from a variety of odor objects that may be important to rodents in the wild. We studied 21 distinct natural odor stimuli ranging from possible food sources such as fruits, vegetables, and meats to environmental odor objects such as grass, herbs, and tree leaves. The natural odor objects evoked robust and surprisingly focal patterns of 2-deoxyglucose uptake involving clusters of neighboring glomeruli, thereby resembling patterns evoked by pure chemicals. Overall, the patterns were significantly related to patterns evoked by monomolecular odorant components that had been studied previously. Object patterns also were significantly related to the molecular features present in the mixture components. Despite these overall relationships, there were individual examples of object patterns that were simpler than might have been predicted given the multiplicity of components present in the vapors. In these cases, the object patterns lacked certain responses evoked by their major odorant mixture components. These data suggest the possibility of mixture response interactions and provide a foundation for understanding the neural coding of natural odor stimuli.
为了确定天然气味混合物引起的反应与单个气味化学物质引起的反应有何不同，我们绘制了 2-脱氧葡萄糖在接触可能对野外啮齿动物很重要的各种气味物体蒸气时的摄取情况。我们研究了 21 种不同的天然气味刺激物，包括可能的食物来源，如水果、蔬菜和肉类，以及环境气味物体，如草、香草和树叶。这些天然气味物体引起了强烈且令人惊讶的局部 2-脱氧葡萄糖摄取模式，涉及相邻肾小球簇，因此类似于纯化学物质引起的模式。总体而言，这些模式与之前研究过的单分子气味成分引起的模式显著相关。物体模式也与混合物成分中存在的分子特征显著相关。尽管存在这些总体关系，但也有个别物体模式比蒸气中存在的多种成分所预测的要简单。在这些情况下，物体模式缺乏其主要气味混合物成分引起的某些反应。这些数据表明存在混合物反应相互作用的可能性，并为理解自然气味刺激的神经编码提供了基础。
