Caltech biologists pinpoint the origin of olfactory nerve cells
News Writer:
Katie Neith
Image of 2.5-um thick optical slice through the nose of a zebrafish embryo in which microvillous (green) cells also are stained with a neuronal marker (red) demonstrating their neuronal identify. Nuclei are stained in blue. Scale bar: 30 μm.
Credit: Courtesy of Ankur Saxena/Caltech
When our noses pick up a scent, whether the aroma of a sweet rose or the sweat of a stranger at the gym, two types of sensory neurons are at work in sensing that odor or pheromone. These sensory neurons are particularly interesting because they are the only neurons in our bodies that regenerate throughout adult life—as some of our olfactory neurons die, they are soon replaced by newborns. Just where those neurons come from in the first place has long perplexed developmental biologists. Previous hypotheses about the origin of these olfactory nerve cells have given credit to embryonic cells that develop into skin or into the central nervous system, where ear and eye sensory neurons, respectively, are known to originate. But biologists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now found that neural-crest stem cells—multipotent, migratory cells unique to vertebrates that give rise to many structures in the body such as facial bones and smooth muscle—also play a key role in building olfactory sensory neurons in the nose.