A Multigene Family Encoding a Diverse Array of Putative Pheromone Receptors in Mammals

AbstractThe vomeronasal organ of mammals is an olfactory sensory structure that detects pheromones. It contains two subsets of sensory neurons that differentially express Gαo and Gαi2. By comparing gene expression in single neurons, we identified a novel multigene family that codes for a diverse array of candidate pheromone receptors (VRs) expressed by the Gαo+ subset. Different VRs are expressed by different neurons, but those neurons are interspersed, suggesting a distributed mode of sensory coding. Chromosome mapping experiments suggest an evolutionary connection between genes encoding VRs and receptors for volatile odorants. However, a dramatically different structure for VRs and the existence of variant VR mRNA forms indicate that there are diverse strategies to detect functionally distinct sensory stimuli