Postmitotic, postmigrational expression of tyrosine hydroxylase in olfactory bulb dopaminergic neurons

The developmental expression of tyrosine hydroxylase (TOH) was studied in a large, specific population of dopaminergic (DA) neurons in the main olfactory bulb (MOB) of the rat. These DA neurons comprise an anatomically distinctive population that has been well characterized in the adult hamster (Davis and Macrides, 1983) and rat (Halasz et al., 1981; Baker et al., 1983, 1984). We addressed a basic question in developmental neurobiology: What factors regulate the expression of neuronal transmitter phenotype during development? Olfactory bulb DA neurons are born in the ventricular and subependymal zones and migrate through all intervening layers to the most superficial layer in the bulb (Altman, 1969; Bayer, 1983). The time of TOH expression in these neurons was determined using immunohistochemistry and light microscopic image-analysis techniques. The results indicate that TOH phenotype is not expressed when the cells are born in the subependymal zone nor during their migration to the periglomerular region but only after they reached their final destination, the glomerular layer. This suggests that epigenetic factors associated with the glomeruli initiate the expression of the key transmitter synthesizing enzyme in these neurons. Primary olfactory neurons in the nasal epithelium project exclusively to glomeruli of the MOB; removal of this input in adult rats (Kawano and Margolis, 1982; Baker et al., 1983, 1984), mice (Nadi et al., 1981; Baker et al., 1983), dogs (Nadi et al., 1981), and hamsters (Kream et al., 1984) appears to down-regulate the expression of the TOH in periglomerular cells. The present results suggested that the input from the primary olfactory nerve is also necessary for the initial expression of the TOH phenotype. In support of this notion, we found that lesions of the olfactory nerve during the first postnatal week caused a significant reduction in the number of TOH-positive juxtaglomerular neurons in the following weeks. Thus, the olfactory nerve appears to be necessary for both the initiation and maintenance of TOH expression in olfactory bulb neurons. These findings suggest that specific cell-cell interactions play a key role in CNS neuronal transmitter phenotype regulation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)