Olfactory coding from the periphery to higher brain centers in the Drosophila brain

BACKGROUND: Odor information is processed through multiple receptor-glomerular channels in the first order olfactory center, the antennal lobe (AL), then reformatted into higher brain centers and eventually perceived by the fly. To reveal the logic of olfaction, it is fundamental to map odor representations from the glomerular channels into higher brain centers. RESULTS: We characterize odor response profiles of AL projection neurons (PNs) originating from 31 glomeruli using whole cell patch-clamp recordings in Drosophila melanogaster. We reveal that odor representation from olfactory sensory neurons to PNs is generally conserved, while transformation of odor tuning curves is glomerulus-dependent. Reconstructions of PNs reveal that attractive and aversive odors are represented in different clusters of glomeruli in the AL. These separate representations are preserved into higher brain centers, where attractive and aversive odors are segregated into two regions in the lateral horn and partly separated in the mushroom body calyx. CONCLUSIONS: Our study reveals spatial representation of odor valence coding from the AL to higher brain centers. These results provide a global picture of the olfactory circuit design underlying innate odor-guided behavior. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12915-017-0389-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.