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Abstract:
Olfactory glomeruli are morphologically conserved
spherical compartments of the olfactory system,
distinguishable solely by their chemosensory repertoire,
anatomical position, and volume. Little is
known, however, about their numerical neuronal
composition. We therefore characterized their
neuronal architecture and correlated these anatomical
features with their functional properties in
Drosophila melanogaster.We quantitatively mapped
all olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) innervating each
glomerulus, including sexually dimorphic distributions.
Our data reveal the impact of OSN number on
glomerular dimensions and demonstrate yet unknown
sex-specific differences in several glomeruli.
Moreover, we quantified uniglomerular projection
neurons for each glomerulus, which unraveled a
glomerulus-specific numerical innervation. Correlation
between morphological features and functional
specificity showed that glomeruli innervated by
narrowly tuned OSNs seem to possess a larger number
of projection neurons and are involved in less
lateral processing than glomeruli targeted by broadly
tuned OSNs. Our study demonstrates that the
neuronal architecture of each glomerulus encoding crucial odors is unique.
