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Coding of pheromone signal by olfactory receptor neurons in Agrotis ipsilon
Kováčová, Kristýna ; Košťál, Lubomír (advisor) ; Pokora, Ondřej (referee)
i Abstract The main objective of the thesis is to describe differences in the activity of male A. ipsilon olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) when stimulated by different temporal dynamics of the concentration of the conspecific female pheromone. First, under the artificial situation of constant pulse stimulation, and second, with a fluctuating signal resembling the natural situation. For this purpose, the experimental data were collected in the collaborating laboratory (Dr. P. Lucas, INRAe, Versailles, France) by employing a novel olfactometer system that enables precise temporal control of the pheromone delivery to individual sensilla. Using the R programming language, we analyzed various descriptors of the response reliability, randomness, and variability, as well as the information content of the evoked activity. The results are interpreted in the context of the classical efficient coding hypothesis, which states that sensory neurons are evolutionarily adapted to natural stimuli. The main finding is that although the response variability is widely spread across the ORN population, sometimes with no visible difference between the constant and fluctuating stimulation types, the fluctuating stimulus is usually encoded with systematically higher reliability, as revealed by the inspection of individual ORNs....
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