{"doi":"10.1073/pnas.2116957119","title":"Arrestin-mediated desensitization enables intraneuronal olfactory discrimination in <i>Caenorhabditis elegans</i>","abstract":"In the mammalian olfactory system, cross-talk between olfactory signals is minimized through physical isolation: individual neurons express one or few olfactory receptors among those encoded in the genome. Physical isolation allows for segregation of stimuli during signal transduction; however, in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans , ∼1,300 olfactory receptors are primarily expressed in only 32 neurons, precluding this strategy. Here, we report genetic and behavioral evidence that β-arrestin–mediated desensitization of olfactory receptors, working downstream of the kinase GRK-1, enables discrimination between intraneuronal olfactory stimuli. Our findings suggest that C. elegans exploits β-arrestin desensitization to maximize responsiveness to novel odors, allowing for behaviorally appropriate responses to olfactory stimuli despite the large number of olfactory receptors signaling in single cells. This represents a fundamentally different solution to the problem of olfactory discrimination than that which evolved in mammals, allowing for economical use of a limited number of sensory neurons.","journal":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences","year":2022,"id":283773,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":6,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.951,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":820133,"name":"Isabel MacKay-Clackett","orcid":"0000-0001-5319-0010","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":820134,"name":"Sylvia M. T. Almeida","orcid":"0000-0002-5652-5792","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":820375,"name":"Celina Tran","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":820376,"name":"Safa Ansar","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":765856,"name":"Derek van der Kooy","orcid":"0000-0001-9927-9432","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":820132,"name":"Daniel M. Merritt","orcid":"0000-0001-6273-6644","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":31,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:29:28.452697Z","pmid":"35878038","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}