Transcriptional profiling of adult Drosophila antennae by high-throughput sequencing

Background Antennae of fruit flies are the major organs responsible for detecting environmental volatiles, e.g., egg-laying substrates. An adult antenna contains many sensilla full of olfactory sensory neurons, where olfactory receptor (Or) genes are expressed. Each sensory neuron only expresses up to three receptors, making it difficult to estimate expression levels by conventional methods. In this study, we applied Illumina RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to study the expression levels of Or and other genes in fly antennae.