Olfactory sensory neurons are bipolar cells with a single thin dendrite that ends in a protuberance, the knob, from which several thin cilia emerge. The cilia are the site of olfactory transduction since they contain the molecular machinery necessary to initiate the olfactory response.The patch clamp technique is a powerful tool to investigate ion channels and receptor mediated currents in neurons. In this chapter, we describe the preparation of dissociated olfactory neurons and their use in patch clamp experiments for the functional characterization of their ionic conductances.
Keywords: CNG; Olfaction; Olfactory sensory neuron; Patch clamp; TMEM16; Voltage-gated currents.