2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
The Emergence and Control of Olfactory Circuits in Development
| Project/Area Number |
17K14946
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Research Field |
Neurophysiology / General neuroscience
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| Research Institution | Kyushu University |
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Principal Investigator |
Leiwe Marcus 九州大学, 医学研究院, 助教 (80722008)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2017-04-01 – 2019-03-31
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| Keywords | Olfaction / Olfactory System / Sensory Systems / Olfactory Bulb / Mitral Cells / Neurodevelopment |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
We wanted to understand how the perception of odour changes during development. By using mice we could see that there were several changes that occurred in the olfactory bulb circuitry during development. Firstly, we found that this activity relies on the NR1 subunit of the NMDA receptor, and by knocking out the sub-unit you not only change the pattern of activity, but you prevent mitral cell dendrite pruning.
We then went on to try to explore what changes in olfactory perception during development by delivering odours from baby-adult mice while imaging the olfactory bulb with 2 photon calcium imaging. We are currently, processing the data in order to determine the effect of the differences and whether the two forms of odour encoding occur seperately or together and when they occur. Additionaly, we tried to perturb the development of mitral cells with optogenetics, however, those studies were unfruitful.
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| Free Research Field |
Neuroscience
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| Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements |
These finding will be of significance to the wider scientific community as it begins to explore how a functioning sensory system adapts during its development. We determined that while as previously claimed mice can smell from birth, the nature of what they perceive is different to that of the adult
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