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Signaling by olfactory receptor neurons near threshold
Journal article   Open access

Signaling by olfactory receptor neurons near threshold

Vikas Bhandawat, Johannes Reisert and King-Wai Yau
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, v 107(43), pp 18682-18687
26 Oct 2010
PMID: 20930117
url
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1004571107View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Smell - physiology Animals Rana pipiens - physiology Olfactory Receptor Neurons - physiology Sensory Thresholds - physiology Calcium Signaling - physiology Electrophysiological Phenomena In Vitro Techniques Brain - physiology
An important contributing factor for the high sensitivity of sensory systems is the exquisite sensitivity of the sensory receptor cells. We report here the signaling threshold of the olfactory receptor neuron (ORN). We first obtained a best estimate of the size of the physiological electrical response successfully triggered by a single odorant-binding event on a frog ORN, which was ∼0.034 pA and had an associated transduction domain spanning only a tiny fraction of the length of an ORN cilium. We also estimated the receptor-current threshold for an ORN to fire action potentials in response to an odorant pulse, which was ∼1.2 pA. Thus, it takes about 35 odorant-binding events successfully triggering transduction during a brief odorant pulse in order for an ORN to signal to the brain.

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Domestic collaboration
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Neurosciences
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