Abstract
Mitral cells are the first neurons in the mammalian olfactory bulb to synapse with olfactory receptor axons during glomerulus development, and in an invertebrate, the moth Manduca sexta, mitral-like neurons overlap very early with olfactory receptor axons as they begin to form protoglomeruli. The possibility for early interaction between receptor neurons and mitral-like neurons led us to ask whether such an interaction plays an essential role in glomerulus development. In the current study in the moth, we surgically removed a major class of these mitral-like neurons before glomeruli began to form and asked: (a) Is the formation of the array of olfactory glomeruli triggered by an interaction of the first-arriving receptor axons with the dendrites of mitral-like neurons? (b) At the level of individual glomeruli, must the mitral-like dendrites be in place either to maintain receptor axons in a glomerular arrangement, or to guide later-growing dendrites of other types into the developing glomeruli? Our results indicate that even without the participation of this group of mitral-like neurons, the array of sexually isomorphic ordinary glomeruli forms and the basic substructure of individual glomeruli develops apparently normally. We conclude that the mitral-like neurons in Manduca are not essential for the formation of ordinary olfactory glomeruli during development.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 41-52 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Journal of Neurobiology |
Volume | 36 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 1998 |
Keywords
- Antennal lobe
- Laser scanning confocal microscopy
- Manduca sexta
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Neuroscience
- Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience