Chemosensory recognition of phenotypes determined by the Tla and H-2K regions of chromosome 17 of the mouse

Abstract

It is known that mice can distinguish the H-2 haplotypes of other mice by scent and that urine is a potent source of the characteristic odors governed by H-2. It now is shown that genetic disparity confined to the Qa:Tla region of chromosome 17, adjacent to H-2, is accompanied by distinctive urinary scents that can be distinguished by trained mice in a Y maze. This was confirmed by the transfer of training procedure in which mice trained to distinguish the urine of B6 mice from the urine of recombinant congeneic B6-Tlaa mice successfully distinguished the urines of Tlaa and Tlab homozygous F2 segregants of the cross B6 X B6-Tlaa in the absence of reward, including blind trials with coded urine samples. It also is shown that genetic disparity confined to the K end of H-2 is accompanied by distinctive urinary scents recognized in the Y maze. Thus, mice trained to distinguish the urines of B10 from B10.A congeneic mice successfully distinguished various combinations of B10, B10.A, and B10.A (2R, 3R, 5R, and 18R) recombinant congeneic mice representing genetic differences limited to the K end of H-2. It is suggested that the individual scents of mice comprise several odorous components, at least some of which may be incidental to quantitative or qualitative metabolic variations arising from polymorphism of genes such as H-2.