TEX15 safeguards neuronal diversity in the mouse olfactory system

In many organisms, sensory chemoreceptors obey a one-receptor-type-per-cell rule, which organizes information gathered by sensory neurons1. A key question remains how receptor expression gets diversified so that hundreds of chemoreceptors get expressed across the population of sensory neurons2–4.

Here we show that diverse odorant receptor (OR) expression in mice depends on testis expressed gene 15 (Tex15). We find that Tex15 regulates OR expression in neuronal precursor cells. In Tex15 deficient (Tex15-/-) mice, OR transcript levels are increased in precursors, a handful of early-transcribed OR genes get expressed at abnormally high levels, and these ORs come to dominate the olfactory sensory neuron population.