Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Reiten, Ingrid
• Uslu, Fazil Emre
• Fore, Stephanie
• Pelgrims, Robbrecht
• Ringers, Christa
• Diaz Verdugo, Carmen
• Hoffman, Maximillian
• Lal, Pradeep
• Kawakami, Koichi
• Pekkan, Kerem
• Yaksi, Emre
• Jurisch-Yaksi, Nathalie

Titel

Motile-Cilia-Mediated Flow Improves Sensitivity and Temporal Resolution of Olfactory Computations

Ist Teil von

• Current biology, 2017-01, Vol.27 (2), p.166-174

Ort / Verlag

England: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Motile cilia are actively beating hair-like structures that cover the surface of multiple epithelia. The flow that ciliary beating generates is utilized for diverse functions and depends on the spatial location and biophysical properties of cilia. Here we show that the motile cilia in the nose of aquatic vertebrates are spatially organized and stably beat with an asymmetric pattern, resulting in a robust and stereotypical flow around the nose. Our results demonstrate that these flow fields attract odors to the nose pit and facilitate detection of odors by the olfactory system in stagnant environments. Moreover, we show that ciliary beating quickly exchanges the content of the nose, thereby improving the temporal resolution of the olfactory system for detecting dynamic changes of odor plumes in turbulent environments. Altogether, our work unravels a central function of ciliary beating for generating flow fields that increase the sensitivity and the temporal resolution of olfactory computations in the vertebrate brain. [Display omitted] •Motile cilia in the nose are spatially organized and beat with asymmetric strokes•Ciliary beating generates robust flow that quickly exchanges the content of the nose•Lack of ciliary beating hampers detection of odors in stagnant environments•Ciliary beating improves the temporal coding of odors in dynamic environments Reiten et al. show that the beating of motile cilia in the nose of aquatic vertebrates creates flow fields, which can quickly exchange the content of the nose. These flow fields facilitate the detection of odors in stagnant environments and improve the temporal coding of odors in turbulent environments.