Molecular profiling of activated olfactory neurons identifies odorant receptors for odors in vivo.

Abstract

The mammalian olfactory system uses a large family of odorant receptors to detect and discriminate amongst a myriad of volatile odor molecules. Understanding odor coding requires comprehensive mapping between odorant receptors and corresponding odors. Here we present high–throughput in vivo identification of odorant receptor repertoires responding to odorants, using phosphorylated ribosome immunoprecipitation of mRNA from olfactory epithelium of odor–stimulated mice followed by RNA–Seq. This approach screens the endogenously expressed odorant receptors against an odor in one set of experiments, using awake and freely behaving mice. In combination with validations in a heterologous system, we identify sets of odorant receptors for two odorants, acetophenone and 2,5–dihydro–2,4,5–trimethylthiazoline (TMT), encompassing 69 odorant receptor–odorant pairs. We also identified shared amino acid residues specific to the acetophenone or TMT receptors, and developed models to predict receptor activation by acetophenone. This study provides a means to understand the combinatorial coding of odors in vivo.