SPP 1392:  Integrative Analysis of Olfaction

• Subject Area: Medicine
• Term: from 2009 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 72946999

Olfaction is the most ancient sense in the animal kingdom and plays a significant role for our well-being, despite of its often underestimated relevance when consciously perceiving our environment. While response properties and transduction mechanisms of olfactory receptor cells are increasingly known, the olfactory sense as a whole is still the least understood of all senses. This is presumably due to its intrinsic complexity: hundreds of different olfactory receptors interact with volatile substances in the environment, and their information is processed in highly structured brain areas, first the olfactory bulb and then the olfactory cortex (or their counterparts in other species).
Several crucial issues remain to be tackled: How does a particular combination of volatile substances transform into a characteristic spatio-temporal pattern of activity, and how does this pattern lead to a perception that elicits a given behaviour in an animal? How is this olfactory percept instantiated, how and where are olfactory memories stored? What are the mechanisms by which olfactory stimuli generate their effects on emotions and on behaviour? These are the important questions that the neuroscience community has to solve in the olfactory field in the next few years, and this is the challenge that the Priority Programme faces. The purpose of the programme is to achieve a comprehensive understanding of olfactory coding through the analysis of olfactory systems at all levels of olfactory processing: (1) signalling and coding, (2) information processing, (3) sensory and behavioural performance and 4) perception and cognition.
The Priority Programme is an interdisciplinary project that includes 16 collaborative scientific groups submitted by teams of at least two principal investigators with different disciplinary background. Scientists trained in this programme gain a broad, interdisciplinary background that makes them capable to find employment in many areas.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• International Connection: Switzerland, United Kingdom

Projects

• Analysis of olfactory transduction mechanisms in the behaving hawkmoth Manduca sexta (Applicants Stengl, Monika ;  Wicher, Dieter )
• Behavioral and neuronal mechanisms of olfactory imprinting in zebrafish (Applicants Friedrich, Rainer ;  Gerlach, Gabriele ;  Wullimann, Mario F. )
• Biologische Funktion von Duftstoff-Bindeproteinen, deren Beziehung zu Duftstoffrezeptoren und zur metamorphischen Plastizität der zentralen olfaktorischen Bahn (Applicants Schachtner, Joachim ;  Schütz, Stefan ;  Wimmer, Ernst Anton )
• Characterization of the genetic basis of human olfactory variance (Applicants Hatt, Hanns ;  Hummel, Thomas )
• Characterization of urinary peptides: In search of MHC-dependent olfactory cues (Applicant Rammensee, Hans-Georg )
• Coordination Project (Applicant Galizia, Giovanni )
• Does topography matter? Predicting odor response maps and inhibitory interactions between glomeruli for the dorsal olfactory bulb. (Applicants Schmuker, Michael ;  Spors, Hartwig )
• Function of adult generated olfactory bulb interneurons (Applicants Egger, Veronica ;  Ninkovic, Jovica )
• Function of family-C V2R genes: an integrated analysis of DeltaV2R-C mice (Applicants Mombaerts, Peter ;  Zufall, Frank )
• Genetische und neuronale Grundlage des duftvermittelten Sozialverhaltens bei Blattschneiderameisen (Applicant Kleineidam, Christoph )
• Integrative analysis of multiple pathways in the honeybee olfactory system (Applicants Galizia, Giovanni ;  Rössler, Wolfgang )
• Mechanisms of inhibitory processing in the olfactory bulb and its contribution to olfactory discrimination behavior (Applicants Kuner, Thomas ;  Schaefer, Andreas T. )
• Neuronal mechanisms of pheromone sensing (Applicants Boehm, Ulrich ;  Leinders-Zufall, Trese )
• Odor information processing along an OR-specific neuronal pathway (Applicants Sirota, Anton ;  Strotmann, Jörg )
• Physiology and perception in Drosophila olfaction (Applicants Fiala, André ;  Gerber, Bertram )
• Reception and coding of pheromone signals in insects (Applicants Krieger, Jürgen ;  Sachse, Silke )
• Role of the scaffolding protein SLC9A3R1 in the vomeronasal organ - from protein interactions to the physiology of pheromone detection (Applicants Neuhaus, Eva Maria ;  Spehr, Marc )
• The evolutionary shift from aqueous to airborne olfaction: intermediate and novel properties in an amphibian, transitional species (Applicants Korsching, Sigrun ;  Manzini, Ivan )
• Trigeminale Modulation der olfaktorischen Signalverarbeitung (Applicants Frings, Stephan ;  Müller, Frank )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Giovanni Galizia