Achieving Singularity in Olfactory Receptor Gene Expression

The one receptor per neuron rule has paramount importance for mammalian olfactory perception. To express 1 out of 2,000 olfactory receptor alleles olfactory sensory neurons use a combination of extreme regulatory mechanisms ranging from epigenetic silencing, genomic compartmentalization, an RNA-mediated competition for transcriptional dominance, and a protein-mediated stabilization of transcriptional singularity. Novel molecular insight to the mechanisms that enable assembly of multi-chromosomal olfactory receptor enhancer hubs and the process that determines the winner among them, will be presented in this seminar.