Presentation Details
| Melanin-concentrating hormone and orexin neuropeptides found to communicate from the hypothalamus to the olfactory bulb Julia J.Won1, Meizhu Qi1, 2, 4, Catherine Rodriguez1, Douglas A.Storace1, 2, 3. 1Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.2Program in Neuroscience, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.3Institute of Molecular Biophysics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.4Department of Pediatric Neurology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA |
Abstract
Olfaction plays a vital role in survival as animals regularly utilize olfactory cues to locate mates, care for young, evade predators, and forage for food. Thus, neural circuits that integrate environmental sensory information with interoceptive cues would facilitate an organism’s ability to carry out these functions. Previously, we identified that the hypothalamic input to the olfactory bulb (OB) includes a population of neurons that express the neuropeptide orexin-A. The present study aims to define the genetic identity of non-orexinergic input from the hypothalamus to the OB. We recently reported the presence of melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) expression in the OB, suggesting that hypothalamic neurons expressing MCH could be a candidate population. To test this possibility, retrograde tracer cholera toxin B subunit (CTB) was injected into the mouse OB, and hypothalamic sections underwent immunohistochemistry for orexin-A and MCH. The number, spatial position, and size of all the labeled neurons in the hypothalamus were subsequently quantified. The hypothalamus included retrogradely labeled neurons that did not express orexin-A or MCH, as well as others that overlapped with orexin-A or MCH (i.e., orexin-A and MCH neurons that project to the OB). Therefore, the hypothalamic input to the OB includes projections from multiple genetically distinct populations of neurons. Further studies are needed to fully map out the genetic identity of the remaining projections from the hypothalamus to the OB and to determine their role(s) in olfactory sensory processing.
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