RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Non-synaptic interactions between olfactory receptor neurons, a possible key-feature in insect odor inspection
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.07.23.217216
DO 10.1101/2020.07.23.217216
A1 Mario Pannunzi
A1 Thomas Nowotny
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/24/2020.07.23.217216.abstract
AB When flies explore their environment, they encounter odors in complex, highly intermittent plumes. To navigate a plume and, for example, find food, flies must solve several tasks, including reliably identifying mixtures of odorants and discriminating odorant mixtures emanating from a single source from odorants emitted from separate sources and mixing in the air. Lateral inhibition in the antennal lobe is commonly understood to help solving these two tasks. With a computational model of the Drosophila olfactory system, we analyze the utility of an alternative mechanism for solving them: Non-synaptic (“ephaptic”) interactions (NSIs) between olfactory receptor neurons that are stereotypically co-housed in the same sensilla. For both tasks, NSIs improve the insect olfactory system and outperform the standard lateral inhibition mechanism in the antennal lobe. These results shed light, from an evolutionary perspective, on the role of NSIs, which are normally avoided between neurons, for instance by myelination.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.