Bmal1 Is Required for Normal Reproductive Behaviors in Male Mice.

Circadian rhythms synchronize physiological processes with the light-dark cycle and are regulated by a hierarchical system initiated in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a hypothalamic region that receives direct photic input. The suprachiasmatic nucleus then entrains additional oscillators in the periphery. Circadian rhythms are maintained by a molecular transcriptional feedback loop, of which brain and muscle aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator-like protein 1 (BMAL1) is a key member.

Think You Know How Smell Works? Sniff Again.

The sense of smell is mediated by GPCRs in the odorant receptor (OR) family. Greer et al. report a new family of odor detectors, MS4As, that have similar cellular localization and chemodetection ability as ORs but are not GPCRs and follow a strikingly different logic of odor coding at the periphery.

Cyclic Regulation of Sensory Perception by a Female Hormone Alters Behavior.

Females may display dramatically different behavior depending on their state of ovulation. This is thought to occur through sex-specific hormones acting on behavioral centers in the brain. Whether incoming sensory activity also differs across the ovulation cycle to alter behavior has not been investigated.

Calreticulin: roles in cell-surface protein expression.

In order to perform their designated functions, proteins require precise subcellular localizations. For cell-surface proteins, such as receptors and channels, they are able to transduce signals only when properly targeted to the cell membrane. Calreticulin is a multi-functional chaperone protein involved in protein folding, maturation, and trafficking.

Murine pheromone proteins constitute a context-dependent combinatorial code governing multiple social behaviors.

During social interactions, an individual's behavior is largely governed by the subset of signals emitted by others. Discrimination of "self" from "other" regulates the territorial urine countermarking behavior of mice. To identify the cues for this social discrimination and understand how they are interpreted, we designed an olfactory-dependent countermarking assay.

Live cell calcium imaging of dissociated vomeronasal neurons.

Sensory neurons in the vomeronasal organ (VNO) are thought to mediate a specialized olfactory response. Currently, very little is known about the identity of stimulating ligands or their cognate receptors that initiate neural activation. Each sensory neuron is thought to express 1 of approximately 250 variants of Vmn1Rs, Vmn2Rs (A, B, or D), or FPRs which enables it to be tuned to a subset of ligands (Touhara and Vosshall, Annu Rev Physiol 71:307-332, 2009).

A protocol for heterologous expression and functional assay for mouse pheromone receptors.

Innate social behaviors like intermale aggression, fear, and mating rituals are important for survival and propagation of a species. In mice, these behaviors have been implicated to be mediated by peptide pheromones that are sensed by a class of G protein-coupled receptors, vomeronasal receptor type 2 (V2Rs), expressed in the pheromone-detecting vomeronasal organ (VNO) (Chamero et al., Nature 450:899-902, 2007; Haga et al.

Calreticulin chaperones regulate functional expression of vomeronasal type 2 pheromone receptors.

A variety of social behaviors like intermale aggression, fear, and mating rituals are important for sustenance of a species. In mice, these behaviors have been implicated to be mediated by peptide pheromones that are sensed by a class of G protein-coupled receptors, vomeronasal receptor type 2 (V2Rs), expressed in the pheromone detecting vomeronasal organ. Matching V2Rs with their cognate ligands is required to learn what receptors the biologically relevant pheromones are acting on.

Assaying surface expression of chemosensory receptors in heterologous cells.

The vivid world of odors is recognized by the sense of olfaction. Olfaction in mice is mediated by a repertoire of about 1200 G Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) that are postulated to bind volatile odorant molecules and converting the extracellular signal into an intracellular signal by coupling with G protein Gαolf. Binding of the odorants to the receptors is thought to follow a combinatorial rule, that is, one odorant may bind several receptors and one receptor may bind several odorants to varying degrees.

Trafficking of mammalian chemosensory receptors by receptor-transporting proteins.

Although mammalian odorant receptors (ORs) were identified more than 15 years ago, we still do not understand how odorant molecules interact with ORs at a molecular level. Previous studies of mammalian ORs have tested few ORs against many odorants. Some fundamental properties of the olfactory system, however, require investigation of a wide panel of diverse ORs with many chemically diverse odorants.