The Receptor Guanylyl Cyclase Type D (GC-D) Ligand Uroguanylin Promotes the Acquisition of Food Preferences in Mice

Rodents rely on olfactory stimuli to communicate information between conspecifics that is critical for health and survival. For example, rodents that detect a food odor simultaneously with the social odor carbon disulfide (CS2) will acquire a preference for that food. Disruption of the chemosensory transduction cascade in CS2-sensitive olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) that express the receptor guanylyl cyclase type D (GC-D; GC-D OSNs) will prevent mice from acquiring these preferences. GC-D OSNs also respond to the natriuretic peptide uroguanylin, which is excreted into urine and feces. We analyzed if uroguanylin could also act as a social stimulus to promote the acquisition of food preferences. We found that feces of mice that had eaten odored food, but not unodored food, promoted a strong preference for that food in mice exposed to the feces. Olfactory exploration of uroguanylin presented with a food odor similarly produced a preference that was absent when mice were exposed to the food odor alone. Finally, the acquisition of this preference was dependent on GC-D OSNs, as mice lacking GC-D (Gucy2d(/) mice) showed no preference for the demonstrated food. Together with our previous findings, these results demonstrate that the diverse activators of GC-D OSNs elicit a common behavioral result and suggest that this specialized olfactory subsystem acts as a labeled line for a type of associative olfactory learning.