The vomeronasal organ mediates interspecies defensive behaviors through detection of protein pheromone homologs
By F. Papes, D. Logan, Lisa Stowers. 2010
330 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Summary Potential predators emit uncharacterized chemosignals that warn receiving species of danger. Neurons that sense these stimuli remain unknown. Here we show that detection and processing of fear-evoking odors emitted from cat, rat, and snake require the function of sensory neurons in the vomeronasal organ. To investigate the molecular nature of the sensory cues emitted by predators, we isolated the salient ligands from two species using a combination of innate behavioral assays in naïve receiving animals, calcium imaging, and cFos induction. Surprisingly, the defensive behavior-promoting activity released by other animals is encoded by species-specific ligands belonging to the major urinary protein (Mup) family, homologs of aggression-promoting mouse pheromones. We show that recombinant Mup proteins are sufficient to activate sensory neurons and initiate defensive behavior similar to native odors. This co-option of existing sensory mechanisms provides a molecular solution to the difficult problem of evolving a variety of species-specific molecular detectors.
Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Nutrition and Dietetics, Sensory Systems
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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Citations in the corpus
- What Can Ethobehavioral Studies Tell Us About The Brain’s Fear System? (2016, background): “Olfactory cues associated with predators, such as cat fur/saliva [91], bobcat, weasel, ferret, and fox urine/feces [92,93], have also been reported to evoke innate defensive responses in mice and rats, including avoidance, freezing, and stretch-attend posturing and other risk assessment behaviors.”