Pioneering discovery of an odor-detecting receptor enhancer
Tokyo Institute Of Technology
On the other hand, class II sensory neurons activate other class II enhancers (white circle, H element is yellow or blue). Credit: Junji Hirota Each odor-detecting neuron (referred to as olfactory sensory neuron from here on), chooses a single odorant receptor gene from a fairly large number of options that are split into class I (fish-like) and class II (terrestrial-specific) odorant receptors. This strict selectiveness of sensory neurons is in part due to enhancers (DNA sequences that enhance transcription of a gene when bound by specific protein), which remain poorly understood. The findings are especially important as they highlight the discovery of a regulatory sequence, termed the J element, that controls class I gene expression of many more genes than the counterparts that regulate class II gene expression. Their findings point to a conserved sequence among mammalian genomes that was only present in the J element and not in any other class II elements.