ESITO 2025

Session

Receptor function

RF

23 Sept 2025, 12:00

Hotel Comoran (Villasimius, Italy)

74. Structural mechanisms of chemical specificity in insect odorant receptors

Josefina del Mármol

23/09/2025, 12:00

Oral presentation

A large diversity of odorant molecules reaches the antennae of insects at any given time. The key role of odorant receptors (ORs) is to translate the chemical complexity of the environment into interpretable neuronal signals. To this goal, ORs exhibit a wide range of ligand specificities: many ORs are promiscuous, responding to dozens of chemically diverse odorants, and some ORs are...

75. Dissecting odor coding strategies in the migratory locust

Silke Sachse (University of Wuerzburg)

23/09/2025, 14:30

Oral presentation

Understanding how odors are represented in the locust antennal lobe, which comprises over 2,000 glomeruli, has been a longstanding challenge. To investigate this phenomenon, we used the CRISPR-Cas9 system to generate transgenic migratory locusts (Locusta migratoria) that expressed the genetically encoded calcium indicator, GCaMP6f, in their olfactory sensory neurons. Using two-photon...

56. Unravelling pheromone detection in the Asian and American palm weevils

Ludvine Brajon (iEES-Paris)

23/09/2025, 14:45

Oral presentation

The red palm weevil (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus – RPW) and the American palm weevil (Rhynchophorus palmarum – APW) are major pests that cause significant economic losses to palm crops. These two species use aggregation pheromones to gather for feeding and mating on their host plants, specifically palm trees. Despite their close phylogenetic relationship, RPW and APW are allopatric species...

29. From the depths of the twilight zone: expression & functional analyses of an odorant & gustatory receptor homolog conserved in flies, humans and beyond

Nathaniel Himmel (University of Lausanne)

23/09/2025, 15:00

Oral presentation

Using protein structure modeling-based methods, we recently identified very distant insect Or/Gr homologs, to define a protein superfamily we named 7-Transmembrane domain Ion Channels (7TMICs). 7TMICs are present across the tree of life and likely originated in the Last Universal Common Ancestor (~4 billion years ago). 7TMICs can be classified into two families: Class-A, which includes the...

24. Metabotropic signaling broadens odour tuning in Ionotropic receptor neurons

Suguru Takagi (University of Lausanne)

23/09/2025, 15:15

Oral presentation

A striking dichotomy in olfactory systems exists between mammals, which use G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) for odour detection, and insects, which rely on odour-gated ion channels, including the Ionotropic receptor (Ir) repertoire, which is distantly related to synaptic ionotropic glutamate receptor (iGluR) family. Here we report the first evidence for a GPCR signaling pathway in shaping...

53. Chemosensory evolution at the origin of inquilinism in the bee louse fly (Braula coeca)

Alizée Delarue (Université Paris-Saclay, UMR Évolution, Génomes, Comportement et Écologie)

23/09/2025, 15:30

Oral presentation

Living beings are not isolated and interact with each other. These interactions are often mediated by chemical odorants but how the evolution of the olfactory system can determine intra- and inter-specific interactions remains unclear. A peculiar example is the queen mandibular pheromone (QMP) in Apis mellifera, which inhibits the development of the ovaries in the conspecific workers (hence...

10. Alternative strategies based on transgenic Drosophila melanogaster for the functional characterization of insect ionotropic receptors

Alberto Maria Cattaneo (C3A - CENTER AGRICULTURE FOOD ENVIRONMENT, UNIVERSITY OF TRENTO)

23/09/2025, 15:45

Oral presentation

Background Insect Ionotropic Receptors (IRs) are a relatively uncharted territory. Some studies have documented IR activation by recording neuronal activity in situ, others by their heterologous expression in Xenopus oocytes or misexpressing IRs from Drosophila melanogaster or from the related D. sechellia into the D. melanogaster “ionotropic receptor decoder” neuron, which lacks...