Spatial transcriptomic reconstruction of the mouse olfactory glomerular map suggests principles of odor processing

Tue-P1-032

Presented by: I-hao Wang

I-hao Wang ¹, Evan Murray ², Greg Andrews ³, Hao-ching Jiang ¹, Sung jin Park ¹, Elisa Donnard ³, Violeta Durán-Laforet ⁴, Daniel Bear ^{5, 6}, Travis Faust ⁴, Manuel Garber ³, Christina Baer ⁷, Dorothy Schafer ⁴, Zhiping Weng ³, Fei Chan ^{2, 8}, Evan Macosko ^{2, 9}, Paul Greer ¹

¹ Program in Molecular Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA, ² Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, ³ Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA, ⁴ Department of Neurobiology and Brudnick Neuropsychiatric Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA, ⁵ Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA, ⁶ Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA, ⁷ Sanderson Center for Optical Imaging and Department of Microbiology and Physiological Systems, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA, ⁸ Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, ⁹ Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

The olfactory system’s ability to detect and discriminate between the vast array of chemicals present in the environment is critical for an animal’s survival. In mammals, the first step of this odor processing is executed by olfactory sensory neurons, which project their axons to a stereotyped location in the olfactory bulb (OB) to form glomeruli. The stereotyped positioning of glomeruli in the OB suggests an importance for this organization in odor perception. However, because the location of only a limited subset of glomeruli has been determined, it has been challenging to determine the relationship between glomerular location and odor discrimination. Using a combination of single-cell RNA sequencing, spatial transcriptomics and machine learning, we have generated a map of most glomerular positions in the mouse OB. These observations significantly extend earlier studies and suggest an overall organizational principle in the OB that may be used by the brain to assist in odor decoding.