How does the brain work? Someday, we'll figure it out. Group Leader, MRC LMB, and Professor, University of Cambridge, UK. # neuroscience # Drosophila # ScientificPublishing # academia # TrakEM2 # FijiSc # CATMAID # connectomics # connectome # vEM # iNaturalist # entomology Born at 335 ppm. Brains, signal processing, software and entomology: there will be bugs.
How does the brain work? Someday, we'll figure it out. Group Leader, MRC LMB, and Professor, University of Cambridge, UK. # neuroscience # Drosophila # ScientificPublishing # academia # TrakEM2 # FijiSc # CATMAID # connectomics # connectome # vEM # iNaturalist # entomology Born at 335 ppm. Brains, signal processing, software and entomology: there will be bugs.
An undergraduate student asked me about olfactory sensory processing and this is what I replied. What have I missed of major importance, from the perspective of a senior undergrad?
The olfactory system is indeed fascinating, one that challenged researchers for some time. The first major break through came from Richard Axel's lab by the hand of the then student Leslie Vosshall, now professor at Rockefeller in New York and prominent HHMI Vicepresident and mosquito researcher.
Vosshall LB, Amrein H, Morozov PS, Rzhetsky A, Axel R. A spatial map of olfactory receptor expression in the Drosophila antenna. Cell. 1999 Mar 5;96(5):725-36.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(00)80582-6
A search for "Vosshall Axel" in Google Scholar will surface related papers:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=vosshall+axel&btnG=
A conceptual breakthrough in olfactory coding came from the study of receptors by several groups, in both flies and mice, and later in zebrafish, but what I find compelling is the development of the primacy hypothesis for olfactory receptors by Rinberg's and Koulakov's labs:
Wilson CD, Serrano GO, Koulakov AA, Rinberg D. A primacy code for odor identity. Nature communications. 2017 Nov 14;8(1):1477.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01432-4
The above relates to the ability of animals to have a small number of olfactory receptors (like a fly larva) or more (an adult fruit fly) or many more (like moths and bees), or even more (like in a dog's nose), and yet the system works. More receptors support a less coarse encoding of odours, and vice versa. But the system for olfactory sensing is flexible and therefore evolvable.
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