Larval Zebrafish Use Olfactory Detection of Sodium and Chloride to Avoid Salt Water.

ABSTRACT: Salinity levels constrain the habitable environment of all aquatic organisms. Zebrafish are freshwater fish that cannot tolerate high-salt environments and would therefore benefit from neural mechanisms that enable the navigation of salt gradients to avoid high salinity. Yet zebrafish lack epithelial sodium channels, the primary conduit land animals use to taste sodium. This suggests fish may possess novel, undescribed mechanisms for salt detection. In the present study, we show that zebrafish indeed respond to small temporal increases in salt by reorienting more frequently. Further, we use calcium imaging techniques to identify the olfactory system as the primary sense used for salt detection, and we find that a specific subset of olfactory receptor neurons encodes absolute salinity conce

SUBMITTER: Herrera KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7904661 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature