Emx2 reverses hair bundle orientation in sensory hair cells.

Acquisition of hair bundle orientation in sensory hair cells is only sensitive to Emx2 during a critical time window.

Emx2 mediates the directional selectivity of neuromasts by regulating hair bundle orientation in hair cells, and by selecting afferent neuronal targets.

Emx2 is not required for sibling HCs to acquire their designated locations within the neuromast, inferring that Emx2 mediates opposite HC orientation by changing location of hair bundle establishment.

The ability of hair cells to produce an electrical signal in response to a mechanical stimulus stems from tension in the elastic tip links within the bundles.

A new method is described to apply rapid and uniform mechanical forces to vestibular and cochlear hair cells.

The tip-link complex of the hair cell is mechanically tuned along the tonotopic axis of the cochlea.

A new purification method for stereocilia membranes enables efficient immunoaffinity purification of rare protein complexes from hair cell stereocilia, including the newly described complex of deafness genes PDZD7 and MYO7A.

The tail domain of Myosin III binds to and cross-links actin bundling protein Espin1 and thus modulates higher order actin bundle structures in cellular processes such as stereocilia and microvilli.

Interactions in protein complexes can be predicted from evolutionary information from genomic sequences.