Project description:Animals must learn through experience which foods are nutritious and should be consumed, and which are toxic and should be avoided. Enteroendocrine cells (EECs) are the principal chemosensors in the GI tract, but investigation of their role in behavior has been limited by the difficulty of selectively targeting these cells in vivo. Here we describe an intersectional genetic approach for manipulating EEC subtypes in behaving mice. We show that multiple EEC subtypes inhibit food intake but have different effects on learning. Conditioned flavor preference is driven by release of cholecystokinin whereas conditioned taste aversion is mediated by serotonin and substance P. These positive and negative valence signals are transmitted by vagal and spinal afferents, respectively. These findings establish a cellular basis for how chemosensing in the gut drives learning about food.
Project description:Cell type-specific RNA-seq to profile transcriptional changes in sorted BLA projection neurons during conditioned taste aversion learning
Project description:Feeding is an important activity for all animals providing nutrients essential for survival and reproduction. Not surprisingly, learning plays a critical role in feeding behavior through the establishment and strengthening of food preferences and aversions. That is, the integration of taste and post ingestive visceral signals in the brain results in memorial representations about the consequences associated with ingesting a particular food. For example, when ingestion of a food is followed by negative gastrointestinal consequences (e.g. nausea, sickness, or vomiting), the animal develops a conditioned taste aversion (CTA), which produces a switch from acceptance to avoidance of that and any like tasting stimulus. Despite recent advances in understanding CTA responsive intracellular signaling pathways in the amygdala, little is known about any long-term regulation of target gene expression following CTA memory consolidation and retrieval. The present study utilized oligo-nucleotide microarray to understand the genes and networks involved in Conditional Taste Aversion Behavior.
Project description:To uncover novel molecules involved in taste detection, we performed a microarray-based screen for genes enriched in taste neurons. Proboscis RNA from flies homozygous for a recessive poxn null mutation was compared to RNA from heterozygous controls. Poxn mutants have a transformation of labellar gustatory chemosensory bristles into mechanosensory bristles and therefore lack most or all taste neurons. Experiment Overall Design: Proboscises of poxn70 homozygous mutant and poxn70 heterozygous mutant males (8-18 days post eclosure) were dissected, and total RNA was harvested in Trizol according to standard trizol protocol. Samples for each microarray were prepared from 164-280 proboscises. We performed 3 biological replicates for each genotype.
Project description:Taste stem/progenitor cells from the mouse posterior tongue have been recently used to generate taste bud organoids. However, the inaccessible location of the taste receptor cells is observed in conventional organoids. Here, we established a suspension culture method for fine tuning of taste bud organoid by apicobasal polarity alteration to form the accessible localization of taste receptor cells in organoid. Compared to conventional Matrigel-embedded organoids, suspension-cultured organoids showed comparable differentiation and renewal rates to those of taste buds in vivo and exhibited functional taste receptor cells and cycling progenitor cells. Accessible taste receptor cells on the outer region of taste bud organoids enabled the direct application of calcium imaging for evaluating the taste response. Moreover, suspension-cultured organoids could be genetically altered using gene editing methods. Suspension-cultured taste bud organoid harmoniously integrated with the recipient lingual epithelium; maintained the taste receptor cells and gustatory innervation capacity. Thus, we propose that suspension-cultured organoids may provide efficient model for taste research including taste bud development, regeneration and transplantation