Evidence map›Paper›PMID 29540522›Full record

ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2018

Olfaction written in bone: cribriform plate size parallels olfactory receptor gene repertoires in Mammalia.

Deborah J Bird, William J Murphy, Lester Fox-Rosales, Iman Hamid, Robert A Eagle, Blaire Van Valkenburgh

Open access · bronzeAbstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
28citing papers in PubMed
9.2field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

28 citing papers in PubMed, 98 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
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  3. The olfactory bulb endocast as a proxy for mammalian olfaction.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.

Deborah J BirdDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, 610 Charles E. Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095-8347, USA dbirdseed@gmail.com.ORCID 0000-0001-8217-8985
William J MurphyDepartment of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4458, USA.
Lester Fox-RosalesDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, 610 Charles E. Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095-8347, USA.
Iman HamidDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, 610 Charles E. Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095-8347, USA.
Robert A EagleDepartment of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California Los Angeles, 520 Portola Plaza, Math Sciences Building 7127, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
Blaire Van ValkenburghDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, 610 Charles E. Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095-8347, USA.
University of California, Los Angeles · USTexas A&M University · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The evolution of mammalian olfaction is manifested in a remarkable diversity of gene repertoires, neuroanatomy and skull morphology across living species. Olfactory receptor genes (ORGs), which initiate the conversion of odorant molecules into odour perceptions and help an animal resolve the olfactory world, range in number from a mere handful to several thousand genes across species. Within the snout, each of these ORGs is exclusively expressed by a discrete population of olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs), suggesting that newly evolved ORGs may be coupled with new OSN populations in the nasal epithelium. Because OSN axon bundles leave high-fidelity perforations (foramina) in the bone as they traverse the cribriform plate (CP) to reach the brain, we predicted that taxa with larger ORG repertoires would have proportionately expanded footprints in the CP foramina. Previous work found a correlation between ORG number and absolute CP size that disappeared after accounting for body size. Using updated, digital measurement data from high-resolution CT scans and re-examining the relationship between CP and body size, we report a striking linear correlation between relative CP area and number of functional ORGs across species from all mammalian superorders. This correlation suggests strong developmental links in the olfactory pathway between genes, neurons and skull morphology. Furthermore, because ORG number is linked to olfactory discriminatory function, this correlation supports relative CP size as a viable metric for inferring olfactory capacity across modern and extinct species. By quantifying CP area from a fossil sabertooth cat (

Indexed as

AnimalsEthmoid BoneMammalsReceptors, OdorantSmellTomography, X-Ray ComputedReceptors, Odorantcribriform plateolfactory receptor geneolfactory sensory neuronpseudogenesabertooth catskull morphology

Identifiers

PMID29540522
PMCPMC5879636
OpenAlexW2793756765

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.