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Skn-1a (Pou2f3) specifies taste receptor cell lineage

Nature Neuroscience volume 14, pages 685–687 (2011)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 26 August 2011

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Abstract

Functional diversification of taste cells is crucial for proper discrimination of taste qualities. We found the homeodomain protein Skn-1a (Pou2f3) to be expressed in sweet, umami and bitter taste cells. Skn-1a–deficient mice lacked electrophysiological and behavioral responses to sweet, umami and bitter tastes, as a result of a complete absence of sweet, umami and bitter cells and the concomitant expansion of sour cells. Skn-1a is critical for generating and balancing the diverse composition of taste cells.

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Figure 1: Skn-1 is exclusively expressed in sweet, umami and bitter taste receptor cells.
Figure 2: Skn-1a is essential for the reception and perception of sweet, umami and bitter tastes.
Figure 3: Loss of Skn-1a alters the composition of taste receptor cells.

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  • 13 July 2011

    In the version of this article initially published, the labels for NaCl and citric acid were reversed in Figure 2c. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Y. Sato for assistance with the BAC library screening, the staff of the Research Resource Center, RIKEN, for assistance with generating chimeric and transgenic mice, and T. Kondo for useful comments on the manuscript. This work was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (16688006 and 18688020 to I.M., 21780121 to M.O., and 16108004 and 20380183 to K.A.) and Innovative Areas (Systems Molecular Ethology, Y.Y.) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, a grant from the Research and Development Program for New Bioindustry Initiatives (K.A.), an Ajinomoto Amino Acid Research Program research grant (I.M.), and US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders research grant R03 DC011143 (I.M.).

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Author notes

  1. Ichiro Matsumoto & Masataka Narukawa

    Present address: Present addresses: Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (I.M.); Department of Molecular Genetics, German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany (M.N.).,

  2. Ichiro Matsumoto and Makoto Ohmoto: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Biological Chemistry, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Ichiro Matsumoto, Makoto Ohmoto, Masataka Narukawa & Keiko Abe

  2. Laboratory for Neurobiology of Synapse, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Saitama, Japan

    Yoshihiro Yoshihara

Authors
  1. Ichiro Matsumoto
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  2. Makoto Ohmoto
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  3. Masataka Narukawa
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  4. Yoshihiro Yoshihara
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Contributions

I.M. and K.A. designed the experiments. I.M., M.O. and Y.Y. generated the transgenic and gene-targeting mice. I.M. and M.O. performed histological experiments. M.N. performed electrophysiological and behavioral experiments. I.M. and M.O. analyzed the data. I.M., Y.Y. and K.A. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Ichiro Matsumoto or Keiko Abe.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–6 and Supplementary Methods (PDF 4720 kb)

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Matsumoto, I., Ohmoto, M., Narukawa, M. et al. Skn-1a (Pou2f3) specifies taste receptor cell lineage. Nat Neurosci 14, 685–687 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2820

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