Mechanotransduction current is essential for stability of the transducing stereocilia in mammalian auditory hair cells
- College of Medicine, University of Kentucky, United States
- Harvard Medical School, United States
Abstract
Mechanotransducer channels at the tips of sensory stereocilia of inner ear hair cells are gated by the tension of 'tip links' interconnecting stereocilia. To ensure maximal sensitivity, tip links are tensioned at rest, resulting in a continuous influx of Ca2+ into the cell. Here we show that this constitutive Ca2+ influx, usually considered as potentially deleterious for hair cells, is in fact essential for stereocilia stability. In the auditory hair cells of young postnatal mice and rats, a reduction in mechanotransducer current, via pharmacological channel blockers or disruption of tip links, leads to stereocilia shape changes and shortening. These effects occur only in stereocilia that harbor mechanotransducer channels, recover upon blocker washout or tip link regeneration, and can be replicated by manipulations of extracellular Ca2+ or intracellular Ca2+ buffering. Thus, our data provide the first experimental evidence for the dynamic control of stereocilia morphology by the mechanotransduction current.
Article and author information
Author details
A Catalina Vélez-Ortega
Gregory I Frolenkov
Funding
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (DC014658)
- Gregory I Frolenkov
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (DC008861)
- Gregory I Frolenkov
American Hearing Research Foundation
- A Catalina Vélez-Ortega
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All animal procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at the University of Kentucky (protocol 00903M2005).
Copyright
© 2017, Vélez-Ortega et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Mechanotransduction current is essential for stability of the transducing stereocilia in mammalian auditory hair cells
eLife 6:e24661.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24661
