"Our results suggest that developmental experiences may be encoded at the level of olfactory receptor regulation, and provide a simple mechanism by which C. elegans is able to precisely modulate its behavioral preferences as a function of its current and past experiences."
cc @Odedrechavi
https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article-abstract/222/3/iyac143/6696218?redirectedFrom=fulltext
@Odedrechavi @cyrilpedia
I haven't quite figured out this interface so not sure what this is apropos of but remember that each olf neuron in worms expresses >100 Olf receptors (according to CeNGEN - maybe as many as 250. Changing synaptic strength would change responses to ALL of those odorants. Altering individual receptor expression (also see recent paper from Ian McLachlan from Flavell lab in eLife) allows odorant-specific plasticity.
@sengupta @cyrilpedia that’s how I think about this too, and then the question is “if worms learn like that, do other animals do it too, even when they have many more neurons?” (And I also don’t think I figured out this platform yet)
@Odedrechavi @cyrilpedia
I think a great paper that addresses this is from Bob Datta's lab (no idea how to find and tag people on here yet) suggesting that these principles are generalizable in some contexts:
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01337-4?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867421013374%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
@sengupta @cyrilpedia that’s an amazing paper
@Odedrechavi @sengupta In a way it resembles the way immunologists ventured into mammalian olfactory receptors, hoping to find not gene regulation, but somatic recombination ("when all you have is a hammer" etc) - so that the olfactory sensory network would be hardwired via cellular identity
@cyrilpedia super cool paper @sengupta
Maybe in worms that’s how (olfactory) memory is encoded, by gene regularly mechanisms (no need to strengthen/weaken synapses so much?)