RT Journal Article
T1 Sex separation unveils the functional plasticity of the vomeronasal organ in rabbits
A1 Rodríguez Villamayor, Paula
A1 Gullón Álvarez, Julián
A1 Quintela Arias, Luis Ángel
A1 Sánchez Quinteiro, Pablo
A1 Martínez Portela, Paulino
A1 Robledo Sánchez, Diego
K1 Adaptation
K1 Adults
K1 Chemoreception
K1 Females
K1 Functional plasticity
K1 Gene expression
K1 Juveniles
K1 Males
K1 Neurons
K1 Odorant receptors
K1 Physiology
K1 RNAseq
K1 Sex separation
K1 Socio-environmental conditions
K1 Steroids
K1 Transcriptomes
K1 Vomeronasal organ
K1 Pheromones
AB Chemosensory cues are vital for social and sexual behaviours and are primarily detected and processed by the vomeronasal system (VNS), whose plastic capacity has been investigated in mice. However, studying chemosensory plasticity outside of laboratory conditions may give a more realistic picture of how the VNS adapts to a changing environment. Rabbits are a well-described model of chemocommunication since the discovery of the rabbit mammary pheromone and their vomeronasal organ (VNO) transcriptome was recently characterised, a first step to further study plasticity-mediated transcriptional changes. In this study, we assessed the plastic capacity of the rabbit male and female VNO under sex-separation vs. sex-combined scenarios, including adults and juveniles, to determine whether the rabbit VNO is plastic and, if so, whether such plasticity is already established at early stages of life. First, we characterised the number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the VNO of rabbit male and female under sex-separation and compared it to sex-combined individuals, both in adults and juveniles, finding that differences between male and female were larger in a sex-separated scenario. Secondly, we analysed the number of DEGs between sex-separated and sex-combined scenarios, both in males and females. In adults, both sexes showed a high number of DEGs while in juveniles only females showed differences. Additionally, the vomeronasal receptor genes were strikingly downregulated in sex-separated adult females, whereas in juveniles upregulation was shown for the same condition, suggesting a role of VRs in puberty onset. Finally, we described the environment-modulated plastic capacity of genes involved in reproduction, immunity and VNO functional activity, including G-protein coupled receptors. Our results show that sex-separation induces sex- and stage-specific gene expression differences in the VNO of male and female rabbit, both in adults and juveniles. These results bring out for the first time the plastic capacity of the rabbit VNO, supporting its functional adaptation to specifically respond to a continuous changing environment. Finally, species-specific differences and individual variability should always be considered in VNO studies and overall chemocommunication research
PB Frontiers
YR 2022
FD 2022
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/32167
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/32167
LA eng
NO Villamayor, P. R., Gullón, J., Quintela, L., Sánchez-Quinteiro, P., Martínez, P., & Robledo, D. (2022). Sex separation unveils the functional plasticity of the vomeronasal organ in rabbits. Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, 15, 1034254.
NO This work was supported by the Strategic Research Cluster BioReDes, funded by the Regional Government Xunta de Galicia under the project number ED431E 2018/09, and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the project number PID2021-127814OB-I00. PRV was supported by a regional Ph.D. Fellowship from Xunta de Galicia (ED481A-2020/225). DR was supported by BBSRC Institute Strategic Programme Grants to The Roslin Institute (BB/P013759/1 and BB/P013740/1).
DS Minerva
RD 23 abr 2026