deterioration of the gαo vomeronasal pathway in sexually dimorphic mammals恶化的犁鼻骨gαo通路性二态的哺乳动物.pdfVIP

Deterioration of the Gao Vomeronasal Pathway in Sexually Dimorphic Mammals ´ 1 ¤ ´ 1 2 1 Rodrigo Suarez * , Pedro Fernandez-Aburto , Paul R. Manger , Jorge Mpodozis ´ ´ ´ 1 Laboratorio de Neurobiologıa y Biologıa del Conocer, Departamento de Biologıa, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile, 2 School of Anatomical Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa Abstract In mammals, social and sexual behaviours are largely mediated by the vomeronasal system (VNS). The accessory olfactory bulb (AOB) is the first synaptic locus of the VNS and ranges from very large in Caviomorph rodents, small in carnivores and ungulates, to its complete absence in apes, elephants, most bats and aquatic species. Two pathways have been described in the VNS of mammals. In mice, vomeronasal neurons expressing Gai2 protein project to the rostral portion of the AOB and respond mostly to small volatile molecules, whereas neurons expressing Gao project to the caudal AOB and respond mostly to large non-volatile molecules. However, the Gao-expressing pathway is absent in several species (horses, dogs, musk shrews, goats and marmosets) but no hypotheses have been proposed to date to explain the loss of that pathway. We noted that the species that lost the Gao pathway belong to Laurasiatheria and Primates lineages, both clades with ubiquitous sexual dimorphisms across species. To assess whether similar events of Gao pathway loss could have occurred convergently in dimorphic species we studied G-protein expression in the AOB of two species that independently evolved sexually dimorphic traits: the Cali