Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35861321›Full record

ArticleeLife2022

Mapping odorant sensitivities reveals a sparse but structured representation of olfactory chemical space by sensory input to the mouse olfactory bulb.

Shawn D Burton, Audrey Brown, Thomas P Eiting, Isaac A Youngstrom, Thomas C Rust, Michael Schmuker, Matt Wachowiak

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in eLife, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
29citing papers in PubMed
5.3field-weighted citation impact, top 3% 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

29 citing papers in PubMed, 43 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
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  8. Order code in the olfactory system.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025
    Article
  9. Review
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  11. Article
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  13. Recalibrating Olfactory Neuroscience to the Range of Naturally Occurring Odor Concentrations.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025
    Review
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Anterior Olfactory Cortices Differentially Transform Bottom-Up Odor Signals to Produce Inverse Top-Down Outputs.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024
    Article
  17. Dense and Persistent Odor Representations in the Olfactory Bulb of Awake Mice.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024
    Article
  18. Article
  19. Review
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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

7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

Shawn D BurtonDepartment of Neurobiology, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, United States.ORCID 0000-0002-8907-6487
Audrey BrownDepartment of Neurobiology, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, United States.
Thomas P EitingDepartment of Neurobiology, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, United States.
Isaac A YoungstromDepartment of Neurobiology, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, United States.
Thomas C RustDepartment of Neurobiology, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, United States.
Michael SchmukerBiocomputation Group, Centre of Data Innovation Research, Department of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom.ORCID 0000-0001-6753-4929
Matt WachowiakDepartment of Neurobiology, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, United States.ORCID 0000-0003-4508-9793
University of Utah · USUniversity of Hertfordshire · GB

Funding

Using functionally-defined glomeruli to probe circuit function in the mammalian olfactory bulbR01NS109979 · NINDS · UNIVERSITY OF UTAH · PI WACHOWIAK, DALE M · 2018 to 2022
$1.9M
Large-scale monitoring of sensory transformations in the mammalian olfactory systemF32MH115448 · NIMH · UNIVERSITY OF UTAH · PI BURTON, SHAWN DENVER · 2017 to 2019
$106k
Medical Research Council 2014217Medical Research Council MR/T046759/1NIMH NIH HHS F32 MH115448NINDS NIH HHS R01 NS109979
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

In olfactory systems, convergence of sensory neurons onto glomeruli generates a map of odorant receptor identity. How glomerular maps relate to sensory space remains unclear. We sought to better characterize this relationship in the mouse olfactory system by defining glomeruli in terms of the odorants to which they are most sensitive. Using high-throughput odorant delivery and ultrasensitive imaging of sensory inputs, we imaged responses to 185 odorants presented at concentrations determined to activate only one or a few glomeruli across the dorsal olfactory bulb. The resulting datasets defined the tuning properties of glomeruli - and, by inference, their cognate odorant receptors - in a low-concentration regime, and yielded consensus maps of glomerular sensitivity across a wide range of chemical space. Glomeruli were extremely narrowly tuned, with ~25% responding to only one odorant, and extremely sensitive, responding to their effective odorants at sub-picomolar to nanomolar concentrations. Such narrow tuning in this concentration regime allowed for reliable functional identification of many glomeruli based on a single diagnostic odorant. At the same time, the response spectra of glomeruli responding to multiple odorants was best predicted by straightforward odorant structural features, and glomeruli sensitive to distinct odorants with common structural features were spatially clustered. These results define an underlying structure to the primary representation of sensory space by the mouse olfactory system.

Indexed as

Olfactory Receptor NeuronsReceptors, OdorantAnimalsMiceOdorantsOlfactory BulbSmellReceptors, Odorantchemoinformaticscodingimagingmouseneuroscienceodorolfactometry

Identifiers

PMID35861321
PMCPMC9352350
OpenAlexW4286110904

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
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.