Postnatal development of the rat vomeronasal organ.

The vomeronasal organ (VNO), also know as Jacobson’s organ, is a paired chemosensory organ mediating the perception of chemical stimuli related to social and/or reproductive behavior (for review, see Farbman, 1992). In rodents, it is an elongated tube, with a crescentshaped sensory epithelium (SE) consisting of basal cells, bipolar neurons and supporting cells. Proliferation continues throughout life (Weiler et al., 1999), so the question arose how this influences the VNO structure. We investigated the VNO with respect to size, histological structure and composition, location within the nasal cavity and proliferative parameters, as well as cell death, from birth to senescence, in both sexes of the rat.