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The giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei) olfactory receptor repertoire

For rodents, olfaction is essential for locating food, recognizing mates and competitors, avoiding predators, and navigating their environment. It is thought that rodents may have expanded olfactory receptor repertoires in order to specialize in olfactory behavior. Despite being the largest clade of...

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Autores principales: Freeman, Angela R., Ophir, Alexander G., Sheehan, Michael J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7117715/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32240170
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221981
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author Freeman, Angela R.
Ophir, Alexander G.
Sheehan, Michael J.
author_facet Freeman, Angela R.
Ophir, Alexander G.
Sheehan, Michael J.
author_sort Freeman, Angela R.
collection PubMed
description For rodents, olfaction is essential for locating food, recognizing mates and competitors, avoiding predators, and navigating their environment. It is thought that rodents may have expanded olfactory receptor repertoires in order to specialize in olfactory behavior. Despite being the largest clade of mammals and depending on olfaction relatively little work has documented olfactory repertoires outside of conventional laboratory species. Here we report the olfactory receptor repertoire of the African giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei), a Muroid rodent distantly related to mice and rats. The African giant pouched rat is notable for its large cortex and olfactory bulbs relative to its body size compared to other sympatric rodents, which suggests anatomical elaboration of olfactory capabilities. We hypothesized that in addition to anatomical elaboration for olfaction, these pouched rats might also have an expanded olfactory receptor repertoire to enable their olfactory behavior. We examined the composition of the olfactory receptor repertoire to better understand how their sensory capabilities have evolved. We identified 1145 intact olfactory genes, and 260 additional pseudogenes within 301 subfamilies from the African giant pouched rat genome. This repertoire is similar to mice and rats in terms of size, pseudogene percentage and number of subfamilies. Analyses of olfactory receptor gene trees revealed that the pouched rat has 6 expansions in different subfamilies compared to mice, rats and squirrels. We identified 81 orthologous genes conserved among 4 rodent species and an additional 147 conserved genes within the Muroid rodents. The orthologous genes shared within Muroidea suggests that there may be a conserved Muroid-specific olfactory receptor repertoire. We also note that the description of this repertoire can serve as a complement to other studies of rodent olfaction, as the pouched rat is an outgroup within Muroidea. Thus, our data suggest that African giant pouched rats are capable of both natural and trained olfactory behaviors with a typical Muriod olfactory receptor repertoire.
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spelling pubmed-71177152020-04-09 The giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei) olfactory receptor repertoire Freeman, Angela R. Ophir, Alexander G. Sheehan, Michael J. PLoS One Research Article For rodents, olfaction is essential for locating food, recognizing mates and competitors, avoiding predators, and navigating their environment. It is thought that rodents may have expanded olfactory receptor repertoires in order to specialize in olfactory behavior. Despite being the largest clade of mammals and depending on olfaction relatively little work has documented olfactory repertoires outside of conventional laboratory species. Here we report the olfactory receptor repertoire of the African giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei), a Muroid rodent distantly related to mice and rats. The African giant pouched rat is notable for its large cortex and olfactory bulbs relative to its body size compared to other sympatric rodents, which suggests anatomical elaboration of olfactory capabilities. We hypothesized that in addition to anatomical elaboration for olfaction, these pouched rats might also have an expanded olfactory receptor repertoire to enable their olfactory behavior. We examined the composition of the olfactory receptor repertoire to better understand how their sensory capabilities have evolved. We identified 1145 intact olfactory genes, and 260 additional pseudogenes within 301 subfamilies from the African giant pouched rat genome. This repertoire is similar to mice and rats in terms of size, pseudogene percentage and number of subfamilies. Analyses of olfactory receptor gene trees revealed that the pouched rat has 6 expansions in different subfamilies compared to mice, rats and squirrels. We identified 81 orthologous genes conserved among 4 rodent species and an additional 147 conserved genes within the Muroid rodents. The orthologous genes shared within Muroidea suggests that there may be a conserved Muroid-specific olfactory receptor repertoire. We also note that the description of this repertoire can serve as a complement to other studies of rodent olfaction, as the pouched rat is an outgroup within Muroidea. Thus, our data suggest that African giant pouched rats are capable of both natural and trained olfactory behaviors with a typical Muriod olfactory receptor repertoire. Public Library of Science 2020-04-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7117715/ /pubmed/32240170 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221981 Text en © 2020 Freeman et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Freeman, Angela R.
Ophir, Alexander G.
Sheehan, Michael J.
The giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei) olfactory receptor repertoire
title The giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei) olfactory receptor repertoire
title_full The giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei) olfactory receptor repertoire
title_fullStr The giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei) olfactory receptor repertoire
title_full_unstemmed The giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei) olfactory receptor repertoire
title_short The giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei) olfactory receptor repertoire
title_sort giant pouched rat (cricetomys ansorgei) olfactory receptor repertoire
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7117715/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32240170
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221981
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