Taste Bud-Derived BDNF Is Required to Maintain Normal Amounts of Innervation to Adult Taste Buds.

ABSTRACT: Gustatory neurons transmit chemical information from taste receptor cells, which reside in taste buds in the oral cavity, to the brain. As adult taste receptor cells are renewed at a constant rate, nerve fibers must reconnect with new taste receptor cells as they arise. Therefore, the maintenance of gustatory innervation to the taste bud is an active process. Understanding how this process is regulated is a fundamental concern of gustatory system biology. We speculated that because brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is required for taste bud innervation during development, it might function to maintain innervation during adulthood. If so, taste buds should lose innervation when Bdnf is deleted in adult mice. To test this idea, we first removed Bdnf from all cells in adulthood using t

SUBMITTER: Meng L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4697083 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature