Carolyn (Lindy) Mcbride, PhD
Princeton Neuroscience Institute
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Princeton University

Evolution of odor coding and circuits in a human- biting mosquito
A domestic form of the mosquito Aedes aegypti has evolved a robust preference for human body odor within the past 5K years — providing a remarkable example of how natural selection can rapidly reshape neural circuits to maintain appropriate responses to sensory information. I will discuss our recent work trying to understand the neural basis of this shift. I will also discuss our characterization of a complete olfactory receptor-neuron map for this species based on sequencing of over 45K neuronal nuclei from female antennae. Our map provides important updates to recently published work on receptor co-expression and uncovers a novel phenomenon involving combinatorial molecular coding at the receptor expression level.

Host Information: Michael Liapin ([email protected])

The Columbia Neuroscience Seminar series is a collaborative effort of Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, the Department of Neuroscience, the Doctoral Program in Neurobiology and Behavior and the Columbia Translational Neuroscience Initiative, and with support from the Kavli Institute for Brain Science.