Chemical Senses Vol. 29 No. 9 © Oxford
University Press 2004; all rights reserved
Sex-specific Responses to Urinary Chemicals by the Mouse Vomeronasal Organ
1 Alabama State University, Department of Biological Sciences, Montgomery, AL 36101-0271, USA 2 Current address: Department of Biological Science Program in Neuroscience and Molecular Biophysics, The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
Correspondence to be sent to: Kennedy Wekesa, Department of Biological Sciences, Alabama State University, Montgomery, AL 36101-0271. e-mail: kwekesa{at}asunet.alasu.edu
Social behaviors of most mammals are affected by chemical signals,
pheromones, exchanged between conspecifics. Previous experiments have shown
that behavioral responses to the same pheromone differ depending on the sex and
endocrine status of the respondent. Although the exact mechanism of this
dimorphism is not known, one possible contributor may be due to sexually
dimorphic receptors or due to differences in central processing within the
brain. In order to investigate the differences in response between male and
female mice to the same pheromonal stimulus two urinary compounds (2-heptanone
and 2,5-dimethylpyrazine) were used to stimulate the production of Inositol
(1,4,5)-trisphosphate (IP3) in microvillar membrane preparations of
the vomeronasal organ as an indirect measurement of pheromonal stimulation.
Incubation of such membranes from prepubertal mice with urine from the same sex
or opposite sex, results in an increase in production of IP3. This
stimulation is mimicked by GTP
S and blocked by GDPßS. Furthermore we
found that 2-heptanone present in both male and female urine was capable of
stimulating increased production of IP3 in the female VNO but not
the male VNO. Finally, 2,5-dimethylpyrazine present only in female urine was
also only capable of stimulating increased production of IP3 in the
female VNO.
Key words: IP3, mice, pheromones, signal transduction, urinary compounds, VNO
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