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Cover picture: Signal transduction in vertebrate olfactory sensory neurons begins in the olfactory cilia when odor molecules bind to specific receptors and initiate a cascade of events leading to rapid cAMP formation followed by the opening of Ca²⁺-permeable cyclic nucleotide-gated cation channels. High-resolution confocal imaging techniques have been used to visualize Ca²⁺ signals in olfactory cilia resulting from manipulation of the intracellular cyclic nucleotide concentration. The pseudocolor image shows elevated fluorescence intensity in the distal dendrite of an olfactory neuron including the olfactory knob and eight individual cilia. The diameter of a single cilium is 200-300 nm. The neuron was loaded with the Ca²⁺ indicator dye Fluo-3 AM, and Ca²⁺ entry into olfactory cilia was stimulated by activating the cyclic nucleotide-gated channels through bath application of 8-bromo-cGMP (1 mM). For details, see the article by Leinders-Zufall et al. (pp. 4136-4148).
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