Chemical Senses Advance Access originally published online on November 2, 2006
Chemical Senses 2007 32(2):129-137; doi:10.1093/chemse/bjl038
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Taste Reactivity and Fos Expression in GAD1-EGFP Transgenic Mice
College of Dentistry, The Ohio State University, Postle Hall, 305 West 12th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
Correspondence to be sent to: Joseph B. Travers, College of Dentistry, The Ohio State University, Postle Hall, 305 West 12th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. e-mail: travers.1{at}osu.edu
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The central distribution of QHCl-elicited Fos-like immunoreactivity (FLI) suggests the location of a brain stem circuit that controls the oral rejection response. Although many species display an oral rejection response to bitter stimuli, the distribution of FLI associated with this response has been investigated only in rats. Fos data are minimal for the mouse, a species of increasing importance, due to its use in molecular and transgenic studies and taste-evoked oromotor responses are also only incompletely described in these rodents. We investigated these questions in FVB/NJ mice and a related transgenic strain (FVB-Tg(GadGFP)4507) that expresses green fluorescent protein in a subset of GAD1-containing neurons. QHCl, sucrose, or water delivered through intraoral cannulae yielded behavioral profiles that clearly differentiated QHCl from sucrose. Similar to rat, the number of neurons expressing FLI in the medial third of the solitary nucleus was elevated following QHCl compared with the other stimuli. In mice expressing green fluorescent protein, there was a pronounced distribution of GABAergic neurons in the ventral half of the solitary nucleus. Approximately 15% of solitary neurons expressing Fos were GABAergic, but this proportion did not differ according to stimulus.
Key words: brainstem, GABA, anatomy, double label