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Comment
. 2015 May 13:4:e08086.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.08086.

CO₂ in the spotlight

Luis R Hernandez-Miranda  1 , Carmen Birchmeier  2
Affiliations
Comment

CO₂ in the spotlight

Luis R Hernandez-Miranda et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Optogenetic techniques have revealed that retrotrapezoid neurons are essential for sensitivity to carbon dioxide.

Keywords: electrophysiology; genetics; hindbrain; mouse; neuroscience; respiration; transcription factors.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests:The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. How the nervous system responds to CO2 in the blood.
In mice, the retrotrapezoid nucleus (red) contains about 600 neurons and is directly connected to the preBötzinger complex (blue). Under normal levels of oxygen (normoxia), the activity of the preBötzinger complex controls the firing rate of neurons in the phrenic nucleus (green) by sending signals via premotor neurons. Phrenic neurons control the muscles involved in breathing and therefore control respiratory output. Ruffault et al. report that when levels of CO2 are high (which lowers blood pH), the retrotrapezoid neurons increase their firing rate: this adjusts the activity of preBötzinger complex and increases the firing rate of the phrenic neurons, which in turn increases respiratory output in order to eliminate more CO2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

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