16 Oral - Neurodevelopment I
Thursday April 07, 4:30 PM - 4:45 PM

Authors:
Pratyajit Mohapatra; Karen Menuz

Affiliation: University of Connecticut

Keywords:
j. ion channels; j. ion channels

Insects are vectors of several diseases affecting millions of people globally. They interact with their environment primarily by recognizing and distinguishing a plethora of odors. These odors are recognized by odor receptors in the dendrites of olfactory neurons. Insect odor receptors are classified into 2 broad families: Odorant receptors (Or) and Ionotropic receptors (Ir). These 2 families are widely studied and well characterized. However, most individual receptors are poorly conserved across insect species, making them unsuitable candidates for the development of insect repellents. In a previous bioinformatics study, we identified many evolutionarily conserved genes whose expression is highly enriched in the Drosophila antenna relative to other tissues. Here, we investigate the role of one of these genes, the anoctamin AnoA. The anoctamin family contains many transmembrane proteins, some of which serve as calcium-gated chloride channels. Our work using a transgenic reporter line indicates that AnoA is broadly expressed in all classes of olfactory neurons; it is also found in hygrosensory and thermosensory neurons. Using epitope tagging, we find that AnoA protein is specifically localized to the olfactory dendrites. Investigation of AnoA mutants with in vivo extracellular electrophysiological recordings reveals that it limits the neuronal firing response to odorants. Together, our data indicate that AnoA plays a critical role in odorant signaling in olfactory neurons, and its expression in the antenna of other insects suggests its function is likely to be evolutionarily conserved.