Chemical Senses Advance Access originally published online on March 17, 2006
Chemical Senses 2006 31(5):425-435; doi:10.1093/chemse/bjj047
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Electrophysiological Properties and Modeling of Murine Vomeronasal Sensory Neurons in Acute Slice Preparations
1 International School for Advanced Studies, SISSA, Sector of Neurobiology, Via Beirut 2-4, 34014 Trieste, Italy 2 Institute of Biophysics, National Research Council, 90123 Palermo, Italy 3 Department of Neurobiology, Yale University, School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
Correspondence to be sent to: Anna Menini, International School for Advanced Studies, SISSA, Sector of Neurobiology, Via Beirut 2-4, 34014 Trieste, Italy. e-mail: menini{at}sissa.it
The vomeronasal system is involved in the detection of pheromones in many mammals. Vomeronasal sensory neurons encode the behaviorally relevant information into action potentials that are directly transmitted to the accessory olfactory bulb. We developed a model of the electrical activity of mouse basal vomeronasal sensory neurons, which mimics both the voltage-gated current properties and the firing behavior of these neurons in their near-native state, using a minimal number of parameters. Data were obtained by recordings with the whole-cell voltage-clamp or current-clamp techniques from mouse basal vomeronasal sensory neurons in acute slice preparations. The resting potential ranged from –50 to –70 mV, and current injections of less than 2–10 pA induced tonic firing in most neurons. The experimentally determined firing frequency as a function of injected current was well described by a Michaelis–Menten equation and was exactly reproduced by the model, which could be used in combination with future models that will include details of the mouse vomeronasal transduction cascade.
Key words: action potential, firing, mouse, pheromone, voltage-gated current, vomeronasal organ
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