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About the Authors:
Puneet Dang
Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
Affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, United States of America
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8392-5062
Stephen A. Fisher
Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing - review & editing
Affiliation: Department of Biology, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America
Derek J. Stefanik
Roles Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing - review & editing
Affiliation: Department of Biology, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9351-6804
Junhyong Kim
Roles Supervision, Writing - review & editing
Affiliation: Department of Biology, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America
Jonathan A. Raper
Roles Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing - review & editing
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA, United States of AmericaAbstract
Olfactory sensory neurons choose to express a single odorant receptor (OR) from a large gene repertoire and extend axons to reproducible, OR-specific locations within the olfactory bulb. This developmental process produces a topographically organized map of odorant experience in the brain. The axon guidance mechanisms that generate this pattern of connectivity, as well as those that coordinate OR choice and axonal guidance receptor expression, are incompletely understood. We applied the powerful approach of single-cell RNA-seq on newly born olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) in young zebrafish larvae to address these issues. Expression profiles were generated for 56 individual Olfactory Marker Protein (OMP) positive sensory neurons by single-cell (SC) RNA-seq. We show that just as in mouse OSNs, mature zebrafish OSNs typically express a single predominant OR transcript. Our previous work suggests that OSN targeting is related to the OR clade from which a sensory neuron chooses to express its odorant receptor. We categorized each of the mature cells based on the clade of their predominantly expressed OR. Transcripts expressed at higher levels in each of three clade-related categories were identified using Penalized Linear Discriminant Analysis (PLDA). A genome-wide approach was used to identify membrane-associated proteins that are most likely to have guidance-related activity. We found that OSNs that choose to express an OR from a...