TEX15 safeguards neuronal diversity in the mouse olfactory system
- 1Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, U
Abstract
Animals detect diverse chemicals using hundreds of chemoreceptor proteins. In many organisms, sensory chemoreceptors obey a one-receptor-type-per-cell rule, which organizes information gathered by sensory neurons. A key question remains how receptor expression gets diversified so that hundreds of chemoreceptors get expressed across the population of sensory neurons. Here we show that diverse odorant receptor (OR) expression in mice requires 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. This results in a profound reduction in the diversity of OR gene choice as well as disrupted spatial patterning of the olfactory epithelium, without disrupting the one-receptor-type-per-cell rule. Tex15 encodes a transcriptional repressor, and we show that Tex15-/- mice have reduced heterochromatin-associated H3K9me3 on OR genes. Thus, we propose that Tex15 directs a heterochromatin-based transcriptional repression mechanism that prevents uneven transcriptional onset from skewing OR choice. This mechanism safeguards the cellular diversity that is essential for broadly tuned chemosensation.
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BibTeX
@misc{yusuf2026tex15,
title = {{TEX15 safeguards neuronal diversity in the mouse olfactory system}},
author = {N. Yusuf and D. H. Brann and C. Sun and J. Danoff and A. Irvine and H. Patel and N. B. Ghali and J. Kahiapo and J. Yang and S. R. Datta and J. R. Wang and K. Monahan},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = may,
doi = {10.64898/2026.05.27.728302},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.27.728302v3},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - TEX15 safeguards neuronal diversity in the mouse olfactory system
AU - N. Yusuf
AU - D. H. Brann
AU - C. Sun
AU - J. Danoff
AU - A. Irvine
AU - H. Patel
AU - N. B. Ghali
AU - J. Kahiapo
AU - J. Yang
AU - S. R. Datta
AU - J. R. Wang
AU - K. Monahan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/05/27
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.05.27.728302
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.27.728302v3
AB - Animals detect diverse chemicals using hundreds of chemoreceptor proteins. In many organisms, sensory chemoreceptors obey a one-receptor-type-per-cell rule, which organizes information gathered by sensory neurons. A key question remains how receptor expression gets diversified so that hundreds of chemoreceptors get expressed across the population of sensory neurons. Here we show that diverse odorant receptor (OR) expression in mice requires 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. This results in a profound reduction in the diversity of OR gene choice as well as disrupted spatial patterning of the olfactory epithelium, without disrupting the one-receptor-type-per-cell rule. Tex15 encodes a transcriptional repressor, and we show that Tex15-/- mice have reduced heterochromatin-associated H3K9me3 on OR genes. Thus, we propose that Tex15 directs a heterochromatin-based transcriptional repression mechanism that prevents uneven transcriptional onset from skewing OR choice. This mechanism safeguards the cellular diversity that is essential for broadly tuned chemosensation.
ER -