Preliminary Results Concerning the Expression of Carbohydrates in the Olfactory System of the Sturgeon

Lectins have been used in several areas of biomedicine and are particularly useful for histochemistry. Their ability to map the distributions of various kinds of cell- borne glycan, and thereby to identify particular cell populations, has allowed clarification of a number of issues in neuroscience. In the case of the olfactory system, for example, lectins may be involved in development, in the continual regeneration of olfactory neurons and even in the processing of olfactory information. Whereas in mammals and amphibians lectins have been widely employed for the study of the olfactory and accessory olfactory systems, little information regarding lectin labelling is available in fish. We have used a panel of 11 lectins (UEA, BSI-B₄, DBA, LEA, VVA, SBA, PSA, WGA, WGA-s, ECA, LTA) in paraformaldehyde fixed and paraffin embedded specimens of a Chondrostei fish, the sturgeon ( Acipenser baeri ). Our preliminary findings show that the olfactory receptor cells, the olfactory nerve fibres and their terminals in the olfactory bulbs were labelled with BSI-B₄, DBA, VVA, SBA, PSA, WGA and WGA-s. The presence of glycoproteins, whose terminal sugars are detected by lectin binding, might be related to the reception of an odour stimulus and its transduction into a nervous signal or to the histogenesis of the olfactory system.