The pelvic organs receive no parasympathetic innervation
Margaux Sivori,
Bowen Dempsey,
Zoubida Chettouh,
Franck Boismoreau,
Maïlys Ayerdi,
Annaliese Eymael,
Sylvain Baulande,
Sonia Lameiras,
Fanny Coulpier,
Olivier Delattre,
Hermann Rohrer,
Olivier Mirabeau,
Jean-François Brunet
Affiliations
Margaux Sivori
Institut de Biologie de l’ENS (IBENS), Inserm, CNRS, École normale supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, France
Bowen Dempsey
Faculty of Medicine, Health & Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, Sydney, Australia
Zoubida Chettouh
Institut de Biologie de l’ENS (IBENS), Inserm, CNRS, École normale supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, France
Franck Boismoreau
Institut de Biologie de l’ENS (IBENS), Inserm, CNRS, École normale supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, France
Maïlys Ayerdi
Institut de Biologie de l’ENS (IBENS), Inserm, CNRS, École normale supérieure, PSL Research University, Paris, France
Annaliese Eymael
Faculty of Medicine, Health & Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Macquarie Park, Sydney, Australia
Sylvain Baulande
Institut Curie, PSL University, ICGex Next-Generation Sequencing Platform, Paris, France
Sonia Lameiras
Institut Curie, PSL University, ICGex Next-Generation Sequencing Platform, Paris, France
Fanny Coulpier
GenomiqueENS, Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, Université PSL, Paris, France; Inserm U955, Mondor Institute for Biomedical Research (IMRB), Creteil, France
Olivier Delattre
Institut Curie, Inserm U830, PSL Research University, Diversity and Plasticity of Childhood Tumors Lab, Paris, France
The pelvic organs (bladder, rectum, and sex organs) have been represented for a century as receiving autonomic innervation from two pathways – lumbar sympathetic and sacral parasympathetic – by way of a shared relay, the pelvic ganglion, conceived as an assemblage of sympathetic and parasympathetic neurons. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, we find that the mouse pelvic ganglion is made of four classes of neurons, distinct from both sympathetic and parasympathetic ones, albeit with a kinship to the former, but not the latter, through a complex genetic signature. We also show that spinal lumbar preganglionic neurons synapse in the pelvic ganglion onto equal numbers of noradrenergic and cholinergic cells, both of which therefore serve as sympathetic relays. Thus, the pelvic viscera receive no innervation from parasympathetic or typical sympathetic neurons, but instead from a divergent tail end of the sympathetic chains, in charge of its idiosyncratic functions.
