Centre Européen des Sciences du Goût, CNRS, Dijon, France.
In the honeybee, crucial behaviors such as mating, foraging and social interactions, are
merely based on chemical communication mediated by olfactory cues, species-specific
(pheromones) or not (allochemicals). How odor ligands are screened and detected represents
an important step underlying odor transduction and coding. We used the "patch-clamp"
technique in "whole-cell" configuration to study how worker olfactory neurons in
primary cell culture can detect and discriminate odors as single components or as mixtures.
General odors and pheromones such as queen pheromone and the major component of the
sting and alarm pheromones have been tested. The main results are consistent with the
previous data (1) and show that the sensory neurons in culture: (a) respond to odorants;
(b) are able to recognize one or more odorants and (c) present different odorant spectra.
These properties of olfactory discrimination are in agreement with unicellular recordings on
honeybee antennal cells (2). Such comparative properties between in vivo and in vitro
preparations will thus allow to investigate the molecular and cellular basis of odor detection
and coding by sensory neurons in primary culture (see also Danty et al.).
(1) Masson C., Gascuel J. and Hatt H., unpublished results.
(2) Vareschi E., Z. vgl. Physiol. 1971.