In mammals, the osmolality of the extracellular fluid (ECF) is highly stable despite radical changes in salt/water intake and excretion. Afferent systems are required to detect hypo- or hyperosmotic shifts in the ECF to trigger homeostatic control of osmolality. In humans, a pressor reflex is triggered by simply drinking water which may be mediated by peripheral osmoreceptors. Here, we identified afferent neurons in the thoracic dorsal root ganglia (DRG) of mice that innervate hepatic blood vessels and detect physiological hypo-osmotic shifts in blood osmolality. Hepatic sensory neurons are equipped with an inward current that faithfully transduces graded changes in osmolality within the physiological range (~15 mOsm). In mice lacking the osmotically activated ion channel, TRPV4, hepatic sensory neurons no longer exhibit osmosensitive inward currents and activation of peripheral osmoreceptors in vivo is abolished. We have thus identified a new population of sensory neurons that transduce ongoing changes in hepatic osmolality.

Microglia is activated by brain injury. They migrate in response to ATP and although adenosine alone has no effect on wild type microglial migration, we show that inhibition of adenosine receptors impedes ATP triggered migration. CD39 is the dominant cellular ectonucleotidase that degrades nucleotides to nucleosides, including adenosine. Importantly, ATP fails to stimulate P2 receptor mediated migration in cd39(-/-) microglia. However, the effects of ATP on migration in cd39(-/-) microglia can be restored by co-stimulation with adenosine or by addition of a soluble ectonucleotidase. We also tested the impact of cd39-deletion in a model of ischemia, in an entorhinal cortex lesion and in the facial nucleus after facial nerve lesion. The accumulation of microglia at the pathological sites was markedly decreased in cd39(-/-) animals. We conclude that the co-stimulation of purinergic and adenosine receptors is a requirement for microglial migration and that the expression of cd39 controls the ATP/adenosine balance.

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