TY - JOUR T1 - A transcriptomic atlas of mammalian olfactory mucosae reveals an evolutionary influence on food odor detection in humans JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/552232 SP - 552232 AU - Luis R. Saraiva AU - Fernando Riveros-McKay AU - Massimo Mezzavilla AU - Eman H. Abou-Moussa AU - Charles J. Arayata AU - Casey Trimmer AU - Ximena Ibarra-Soria AU - Mona Khan AU - Laura Van Gerven AU - Mark Jorissen AU - Matthew Gibbs AU - Ciaran O’Flynn AU - Scott McGrane AU - Peter Mombaerts AU - John C. Marioni AU - Joel D. Mainland AU - Darren W. Logan Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/02/16/552232.abstract N2 - The mammalian olfactory system displays species-specific adaptations to different ecological niches. To investigate the evolutionary dynamics of olfactory sensory neuron (OSN) sub-types across 95 million years of mammalian evolution, we applied RNA-sequencing of whole olfactory mucosa samples from mouse, rat, dog, marmoset, macaque and human. We find that OSN subtypes representative of all known mouse chemosensory receptor gene families are present in all analyzed species. Further, we show that OSN subtypes expressing canonical olfactory receptors (ORs) are distributed across a large dynamic range and that homologous subtypes can be either highly abundant across all species or species/order-specific. Interestingly, highly abundant mouse and human OSN subtypes detect odorants with similar sensory profiles, and sense ecologically relevant odorants, such as mouse semiochemicals or human key food odorants. Taken together, our results allow for a better understanding of the evolution of mammalian olfaction in mammals and provide insights into the possible functions of highly abundant OSN subtypes in mouse and human. ER -